


In High Country, In Rocky Cathedrals

by Lessandra



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:27:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lessandra/pseuds/Lessandra
Summary: Tequila’s having a hard time getting used to Britain. It has more to do with blaming himself for not being there for his team as the world was going to shit than any objections he has to the country specifically.Merlin takes a while to recover from the explosion that nearly took his leg clean off.And the Kingsman are slowly rebuilding…
Relationships: Merlin/Tequila (Kingsman)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	In High Country, In Rocky Cathedrals

* * *

_i am the eagle; i live in high country_   
_in rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky._   
_i am the hawk; and there’s blood on my feathers,_   
_but time is still turning_

(“The Eagle and the Hawk”, by **_John Denver_** )

* * *

They live in a semblance of a house that is so skewed it looks like someone has huffed and someone has puffed and bent it all out of shape. His family tries their best to fix it up, have been trying for as long as he can remember. It’s how the trouble with the money first starts, he reckons, but the money was always gonna be tight. That’s just Kentucky for you.

The mines are deep and twisted. “Strange things happen underground, Cricket,” his daddy is fond of saying. He takes them there sometimes, him and his brother. To play, is what “Cricket” thinks, but, really, their mother is too sick to look after her sons and the mines might be dangerous, but there are many people, and, well—it takes a village.

There’s a private corner of his soul that is raised on the lamp-lit twisting shadows of those dark tunnels. On strange sounds, and macabre landmarks, and being a labyrinthine explorer, and ghost stories, and heart-wrenching miner songs.

It’s a kingdom to him. Then, eventually, a graveyard. In the real world, beyond his imagination, the companies that own the mines work people like slaves. In the real world, they don’t care if the workers have enough power for light, or safety, or air. The miners work for tokens as well as money—just another extra layer of bullshit—and the tokens get you power, and power turns on the fans and the air filtration system, and there are _never_ enough tokens. His father is forty when his lungs are all black and oily and he cannot breathe properly anymore, and then cannot breathe at all. Christopher follows shortly: swallowed up by one of those unsafe zones and a collapse, a typical mining disaster.

On her own, his mother can barely support one child, let alone two. Cricket knows it. Can barely support herself, he’ll figure in hindsight: first her husband, then her oldest son, and she is only human, it is hard to hold yourself together sometimes. He’s smart enough to sense it even then, so he leaves. It’s either that or go work in the mines himself, and he’s too selfish for that, or too much of a coward, so he chooses the other thing. Let his momma take care of Amy, and he’ll take care of himself.

That’s how he figures, at least. But he’s fifteen. He’s a total idiot.

* * *

He tumbles from county to county, a teenage drifter. Doesn’t try to leave too far: it’s honestly amazing, the amount of ways his home has fucked him, raw and bloody, but his heart is Kentucky-shaped, still; forever.

He gets by on stealing for a while but grows up too fast. It’s easy to lift wallets from unsuspecting pockets when you’re knee-high to a grasshopper. Not so easy when you’re anything people look at anymore, as soon as you walk in. (He turns that into an asset too, eventually. There’s always more than one way to hustle money. All of it’s better than lying in a ditch.)

He goes by “Solo” when he needs to: he has always been too protective of his name. It is secreted away back in his family home, behind the layers of childhood monikers uttered only by his family.

He goes by Solo, and people assume he’s that adorably in love with the movies. He goes by Solo, in truth, because he is alone. But the trouble with being alone is that you start to miss people, and he _always_ misses people. The aloneness eats away at him. He drifts not in a steady line but tossing himself from one human habitat to another, working odd jobs and huddling towards society.

He picks up a stray dog for a while, to keep himself company; it gets run over eventually as they are hitchhiking their way along the web of Kentucky roads. He weeps over it for half an hour as it is dying excruciatingly slowly in his arms. The driver feels terrible; stays with him throughout, then drives him to the next town over; pays for a supper and a room for him to sleep it off. It’s a hot shower, and it’s food, a good night’s sleep; it’s the worst money he has ever accepted from a stranger, but. Better than lying in a ditch. He spends it as fast as he can. Doesn’t try to befriend any more animals neither.

He works as a janitor at a mom-and-pop shop for several months; it’s a nice gig, but he gets into some trouble with the locals and has to scram. Works as a butcher’s assistant, which only requires him to have muscles; works as a bouncer, which requires the same. Works as a parking valet one lucky short time, and darn but it pays well, and works as a gas attendant during a graveyard shift, which pays nothing at all. Works as a handyman in a small town throughout a particularly cold winter, to have somewhere warm to sleep. Works a summer at a ranch, at one point early on, which is how, years later, and he’s twenty-two, and no longer goes by Solo, he ends up in Lexington as part of their rockin’ rodeo.

It’s like stripping, why they hire him. He’s young, and well-built, and women _love_ to look at him.

“It’s primal,” his boss, David, tells him. “A hot sweaty hick, wrestling a raging animal under control? It’s like legal porn, a’ight? They’re all creaming their panties for it. And if you win, you’re a stud. And if the bronc bucks you, well, chances are, they’re gonna want to take care of you and nurse you back to health. A win-win.”

He’s not looking for a steady job; he’s never had one, and anyhow, ‘steady’ is a different kind of a time period in his head. It becomes one anyway, because for the first time it’s something he’s actually good at.

He picks up another name here, a stage name: _Ace High_. Ace goes barrel racing, and becomes one with the horse, and yes, he has promised himself not to befriend any more animal, but what can you do when a pair of smart eyes is looking at you, and a soft nose nibbles you gently every time after a race. He goes team roping, and becomes one-mind with another person, and he has promised himself not to get close to people either, but… well. That’s his whole pattern. Always breaking his own rules.

He does bareback bronc riding, and it’s exactly how Dave said it would be, with women paying to see him, and sometimes wanting to pay for something extra. And he has promised not to do _that_ anymore, but money don’t stink, and he needs to save up for that moment when they’ll kick him out, ‘cause everyone always does.

He’s an addict, is the thing, and he might not be _that_ kind of an addict just yet, but once an addict is always an addict. He’s just no good at resolutions. Tells himself every time he’ll quit doing something or other, but then he never does. And there’s the rush, too. It doesn’t matter if it’s chemical or natural. For an addict, there’s no quitting that.

Hanging off the side of your horse, trying to tip over a knot of muscles, and speed, and horns, and there’s a reason they call them “suicide runs,” adrenaline shoots through his veins, and he comes off it high as a kite. (And then, eventually, goes and does get high.)

He’s an addict, is the thing, and his poison is whiskey, weed, and wild living. It’s not a life, exactly, but…

Still better than lying in a ditch.

* * *

The man sticks out to Ace for no clear reason. He doesn’t look any different than any other cowboy here, and it’s not even that, it’s not that he looks _off_. It’s the demeanor. A slight cautiousness to his gait, a nervous tick where he keeps shrugging his right shoulder, an over-keenness of his eyes on everything. He’s not a guy who came to a rodeo for fun; he’s jacked-up about something, and he came here to cause trouble.

Ace is a rodeo clown by this point: they haven’t exactly kicked him out, but kicked him to the curb, more like. He’s not the star of the show anymore, even if he’s needed. Wears the kind of make-up that doesn’t exactly turn ladies on anymore, so that cash flow’s done with. And it’s the most dangerous job of them all, so maybe Dave wants him out of here on a stretcher and with a more permanent sort of a termination.

He doesn’t hate the job, but he doesn’t love it either. Nobody should do it who hasn’t asked for it, and he hasn’t asked. But it’s either this, or nothing at all, Dave tells him, and he loves being Ace too much, loves being _here_ too much. So he stays.

If he was still a rider, he might have had time to shadow the stranger—the guy just makes something in him bristle, a prescience of danger, singing in his bones from years and years on the road, on his own, surviving. As a clown, he has his eyes only for one thing, and if he had eyes on the back of his head, they’d be on that same thing too: the bull, and saving the ass of whoever’s riding it.

So he puts the stranger out of his mind. Does his duty. Gets out unscathed, which is a good day. And once he’s done with the ring, he can’t find the guy anywhere again, so he decides to forget about it.

And then, some time after midnight, he’s still at the rodeo, because he sleeps here, no place of his own, and he’s counting money in his room and making short-term plans, which is the only kind of plans he knows how to make. There’s a ruckus outside. Sounds like drunks fighting. It happens sometimes. Some idiots who climb the fence and challenge each other to pat the bull, or tip the cow, or just piss on the wall somewhere.

He exits his cabin, shotgun full of salt, ready to deal with the intruders. And there are plenty. Only they don’t look drunk. They look mean, and armed to the teeth, and they have let one of the bulls out back into the arena, (and not just any bull, either, it’s fucking Shorty,) and one of the men is holding the guy from before, the shifty stranger, by the lapels over the arena.

Ace freezes. They are talking about something, not that he can hear. And then the man lets go.

There are shots fired. A blue crack of electricity somewhere off to the side, like a live wire being snapped. Somebody screams. Ace thinks there might be other people around, he has no idea. Barely has a thought in his head at all, it’s all just blind instinct.

“ _Shitttttt_ ,” he hisses, and does the first thing his body tells him to, which is jump into the ring.

He doesn’t have a plan, doesn’t have any coherent idea. You don’t think when you’re facing a wild enraged animal; you let the thoughts enter your head and pass through and dissolve because you’re all muscle memory, and anticipation, and survival, and nothing can interfere with that.

“Here, boy!” he yells. “Hey. _Hey!_ ” He kicks the dirt of the arena floor, getting the bull’s attention. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you big ugly bastard. That’s right!”

Shorty is a 4,000-pound menace, horns sharper than a barber’s blade and swinging left and right. Ace can barely see the other guy, because you don’t break eye contact with a bull. You don’t ever. The man is barely in his field of vision, eyes trained at the bull also, and Ace waves his arm angrily. “Fucking go!” he yells. He can do that, at least: motion and yell—it only serves to keep Shorty’s attention on him.

Hoofs scrape at the ground, and then the animal is rushing him.

And the thing about this job is, it’s so bad they don’t even offer health insurance if they know what you do. The thing about this job is, the question is never _if_ you’re gonna get hurt, it’s _when_ and _how bad_. Ace has been managing to get off easy, in the months before. Dislocated his shoulder once, had a mild concussion, nothing too serious; he minds that he’s been displaced into this job, and minds the danger, but sometimes doesn’t mind the danger, sometimes maybe loves it a little bit.

But this is different. It’s one-on-one, no safety nets, no backup, no other distractions. The guy finally climbs out of the ring, so it’s only the two of them, the man and the bull.

And the bull charges at him at full throttle.

He doesn’t remember what happens next. He has Ginger Ale to thank for that: her expertise and her alpha-gel and her drugs spare him the memory of what was most likely the most brutal pain of his life.

What he remembers instead is waking up in a hospital room, feeling like he has been stretched on a fucking rack, and all of his bones have been rearranged. Still, he feels better than he has any right to feel after being trampled by 4,000 pounds of hell.

The man from before is sitting in the chair next to him. Ace didn’t really get a good look at him until this point. Up close, he’s got greying hair, a face that’s timeworn but handsome. He has a sort of sleek charm to him, somehow, even though he’s just sitting in a chair, not doing anything else. He’s wearing nice clothes, nicer than Ace realized, save for a funny belt buckle in the shape of a flask. His eyes are on Ace, sharp like before, but kind, too.

“Well-well, Mr. _Ace_ ,” he says, in a smoked voice. “What are we going to do with you?”

* * *

It’s not a handout.

It’s a tough job. They make him relearn every trade he has ever picked up—at least, that’s what it feels like. He knows how to shoot, and ride horses, and throw a goddamn lariat, for crying out loud. Wasn’t that the reason they recruited him, is he had skills to offer? But they teach him all of these things anew anyway.

“You think you’re good, but you’re about as good as this year’s wine,” Champ tells him. “It has to age to realize its potential, and it has to age well. You. You’re just a tater, kid. A maize seed. No one has even distilled you yet.”

He does become better, as they hone him, he’ll have to admit in hindsight. Picks up a few new tricks, too.

But then there’s the stuff you can’t unlearn. Habits of an entire lifetime of barely scraping by.

He’s a team player, but also not. He wants, desperately, achingly, to be a Statesman. Loves working with them. But he doesn’t rely on them. There’s a little alarm bell in the back of his mind, forever looking for an escape route for when everything goes tits up.

And then there are the other _habits_ one picks up living in the gutter. Habits that are hard to kick. They try, anyway. Twelve steps, and all that, but that ain’t him. He knows when to stop and he always gets the job done. Never lets it interfere with who he is. He’s not a drunk, he’s just a party guy. They give up eventually. But maybe they don’t exactly rely on him either.

It hangs in the air sometimes. (Often.) Ginger’s quiet disapproval, and Whiskey’s exasperation, and Brandy’s polite indifference, and Champ’s fatherly concern. The other thing—the life thing—hangs between them in the air as well. Champ’s the perfect cowboy. The picture of American values: happily married, 2.5 kids, takes care of his health. Whiskey’s a different type of a cowboy: an immigrant, from the country that actually invented _vaqueros_ before America ate it up and shat it back out, repackaged, and made it her symbol.

And then there’s he. A walking human shitstain. He knows he’ll never measure up so he doesn’t even try. They designate him _‘Tequila’_ eventually, and he never tries to be anything else. Remains a junior agent for years, never wants a promotion, never does anything to earn one. Hides into the name the way he hides into a bottle, wraps it around himself, and forgets Ace, and Solo, and many others, and forgets the little boy that came before, but can never unbecome the little boy that came before.

* * *

“He remember anything yet?” he asks Ginger, looking in on the lepidopterist.

“You know he hasn’t,” she says, frowning. Frustrated that she can’t change the answer. Frustrated that he keeps asking.

They can’t keep him here forever. The only reason they do is because he was clearly intelligence and they still have no beat on his agency. But the man has no notion of that anymore and, sooner or later, they might just have to let him out. Keep an eye from afar and let him be. He’s alive and it would be good to see him go on living.

“Maybe you should just drop him where the sun don’t shine. That ought to stress him out.”

“He’s not a toy, Tequila,” Ginger says, a reprimand in her voice. “We can’t just put him through the A to Z of psychologically taxing ordeals in the hopes that one might trigger something.” She pauses, then throws a contemplative glance his way. “Would _you_ want us to lock you up somewhere dark if you ever got shot?”

He considers the question. He’s not afraid of the dark. His childhood was spent in the mines: he remembers he got lost there once, no flashlight, no nothing; spent six hours wandering and once he finally found people, he rushed to them, eyes filled with tears of childish terror and upset relief, and nobody had even known he was gone. He remembers a different thing, too: the thick door of his closet and being locked there, in the dark, as punishment, sometimes, or as a prank by Chris, sometimes—he doesn’t feel anything particular about it, it is a memory no more unhappy than the rest.

Out loud he says, “That’s a fair point. It wouldn’t do me any good.”

The truth is, she’s fishing; it’s not very subtle. They’ve all had this conversation with her: she has compiled a whole list of things to choose from of what may bring you back should you undergo an alpha-gel procedure—a veritable menu of tragedy. He’s her one mystery: he told her that he submitted his list to Champ, wanted to keep it private. But there’s not a lot he finds scary, or traumatic. Maybe that’s an answer of its own. So he simply asked to save themselves the trouble and not to bring him back.

* * *

As far as first impressions go, it all could have been done a little better. On both ends, if he’s being entirely fair. The Brits’ feathers are ruffled, and Tequila is mighty unimpressed with the “doomsday protocol”. Not very doomsday-proof if he knocked them both out in under a minute.

He shrugs and puts it behind him. That’s all he can do. He did his job. Hopes they can do the same, but it doesn’t matter either way: people think shit about Tequila too often for him to care anymore. Let them think what they will.

“Quite the surprise for you, huh?” Tequila murmurs, keeping an eye on the British Ginger-Ale. (That’s what he designates him mentally in his head. Merlin is a stupid-ass name. Or maybe he ought to be a Single Malt Scotch, since he seems to like it so much.)

Ginger needs to do a full medical work-up, and they are splitting babysitting duties for now. She has taken the younger one away to her lab first. Eggsy. Now there’s a proper name. Almost sounds like Eggnog, too, which is kind of a Statesman cousin, right there.

Single Malt grunts a non-committal “hm” in response, watching his friend, the lepidopterist, through the glass. His expression is tense, burdened.

“He’s gonna be fine,” Tequila says easily. It’s not even a reassurance, just a fact. Because now that these two are here, he will be. “Freaked me right out the first time I saw it too. But your friend’s still in there. Just needs unlocking. And it seems to me that the two people armed with his triggers just broke into our secure facility.”

Single Malt looks at him flatly, unimpressed. There’s a reddish bruise forming on his forehead, and his clothes are still soaked. Tequila looks him up and down and grins, feeling more amused than contrite.

“We don’t have spiffy tailor shops here in Kentucky,” he says. “Kentucky ain’t about that sort of fanciness. Unless you’re going to the Derby. But that’s mostly hats.”

Single Malt arches an eyebrow at him. “We’ll manage. Thank you.”

Tequila cannot put away his grin and gives an apologetic one-shoulder shrug to soften it. “My point is. I kinda ruined your suits. You smell like a pub floor.”

Single Malt rolls his eyes. “I trust you have a washing machine, at least,” he says coolly.

He isn’t exactly angry—Eggsy is, trying to act all barrel-chested and peacocking around Tequila. Single Malt is just scornfully aloof. It feels like the better man in him knows he shouldn’t take it personally, but his hurt pride prevents him from rising above: Tequila did manage to knock him out in five seconds flat.

He tries to size the man up, looking him up and down closely, and Single Malt raises a pointed eyebrow at this inspection. “What size are you, anyway?” Tequila asks.

Single Malt adopts a haughty look and instead of giving him a simple “38 regular”, or sumthn, rattles off a bunch of measurements that, Tequila surmises, must be required for something a little more convoluted than what he had in mind. The man’s from a tailoring shop, of course, but he’s also not a moron, so this has to be him showing off, in that weird way other Brits would probably find crushing, but Tequila just finds completely ridiculous.

They go down to the laundry room together. Tequila finds him a medium-sized shirt and sweatpants, and they sit and watch his clothes wash, then dry. The inelegant baggy gray does nothing to detract from the man’s prissiness, it’s not the clothes that make him look dignified. Tequila watches him iron his clothes and thinks he looks very much like a proper British butler doing that, but he knows better than to say it out loud, just keeps smirking to himself.

* * *

Ginger lets her British counterpart have his pick of her ops center. Trying to smooth over the aftershock of their first meeting by being as welcoming as possible. It’s very diplomatic of her, but Tequila isn’t sure it’s warranted.

He trusts the doomsday protocol, and her, and Champ, but he ain’t about to stop watching these people. The doomsday protocol is a reference sheet, speaks about their sister agency as a whole, but it’s not any kind of proof of character for its agents, and these two guys are only human. With vices and with vengeance on their mind, and he’s not about to let them roam the Statesman facility unsupervised. Ginger is too trusting for her own good.

“So who else do you have hiding on your shelves?” Merlin asks him. He’s not oblivious to why Tequila’s there, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. “Agents Vodka? Rum?”

Tequila’s answering smirk is sharp. “How about yourself? Wielded any Excaliburs lately?”

“It was our missile system,” Merlin says solemnly. “And it hardly qualifies as an insult. Those are ancient names.”

Tequila pushes the wad of tobacco around his teeth and shrugs. “Playing knights and dress-up? Seems right stupid to me.”

* * *

It’s a non-event when it happens. Could have happened on any other night, because that’s the shit he gets up to on a daily basis, and it’s downright pathetic how unsurprising it is that it happens to him.

He’s had a long day, and quite a bit has happened, and he was wound tighter than a grandfather’s clock. He just wanted to relax. Toss of a glass, or two, nothing more than that: they have a job to do in the morning, and he needs to be sharp and he knows it. Two glasses is enough to make him mellow and loose. He plays a little pool. Gets frisky with a pretty lady. She offers him a joint. None of it is dangerous. None of it is not-dangerous either. And none of it is out of character.

“Are you okay?” Champ asks him the next morning, post-debrief, and Tequila thinks it shows, his late night. Champ is always fatherly, and Tequila’s often wrung out, but he thought he cleaned up nicely, today, for the guests.

And then he sees the rash.

He goes to Ginger, bristling with resentment. Knows that she will just make sad concerned judgy eyes at him, like she always does, and will ask him to pee in a cup, and it’s all gonna be mortifying.

He fucking hates the physical.

It turns out to be a little more involved than that.

“We’re gonna induce a coma,” Ginger tells him kindly.

He doesn’t mind telling her that he hates that plan.

“You don’t even know what’s wrong with me, hun,” he says, studying his hands. The blue pattern on them, like the roads he’s traveled. “It’s some chemical shit. Seems dangerous to mess around with.”

“Don’t you trust me?” she asks teasingly, and he smiles, but says nothing, and the pause stretches awkwardly. (He trusts her, of course he trusts her. But this is an unknown to her either, so he still gets to be afraid.)

“It’s only that—what if I don’t wake up?” he says quietly. He doesn’t want extra measures when he goes—he’s not worth them—but he’s not looking to do himself in either.

Her hand on his forehead is warm and gentle. “I would never let that happen.”

He catches her hand and squeezes it and nods at her. She nods back. Injects something into his IV. He keeps looking at the blue pattern vining around his palms, his arms, his entire body. Roads traveled, roads untraveled. Bull riding; and Amy; and being sixteen again; and his dog; and he falls asleep and doesn’t think about anything else for a while.

When he wakes up, Whiskey has betrayed the Statesmen, Merlin has nearly died, and some psychotic loony bitch nearly killed half the planet.

Ginger watches him stretch for a few minutes: she’s been managing his electric stimuli, and protein levels, and it’s only been a few days, not enough for any significant muscle wastage to begin anyway. He doesn’t feel half bad. Not until she starts talking, bringing him up to speed. Then he stops moving. And sits very still. Sits and listens for a while, and then sits there silently after she’s done explaining. Then he slides off the bed, and walks into the bathroom on stiff legs, and retches emptily into the basin.

He has never felt like such shit about his habit in his entire life—and he has felt like shit about it a lot.

Felt like shit when he met a girl in a honky-tonk, Amber her name was. They went joyriding in a jacked car, and he was so drunk he still gets hungover even thinking about it. Tale as old as time, they crash. He gets away with a few bleeds and bruisers, but she’s wailing by his side. Her arm’s broken. And thank the Lord it’s an arm, not a leg. He didn’t even call an ambulance for her. He just bailed. He was never not a coward about it.

Felt like shit when, during his rodeo years, he got so high he climbed a water tower and was sure as rainbow that he could fly. Felt like shit when he got out into the bullfighting ring hungover, and the rider nearly got gored because his reflexes weren’t fast enough to do his job. Felt like shit when the guy he used to get stoned with got hepatitis, and Tequila never did. _Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds, I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down,_ isn’t that how the song goes? It’s honestly shocking that he survived long enough to even meet Champ, and he felt like shit every time and told himself he’d stop every time, and he never could.

He felt like shit when he tried going cold turkey that one time, and the drugs were leaving his system, and he had the shakes, and was drowning in sweat, and he was gonna go to Ginger and ask for something, anything, to make the weaning off easier, and he somehow ended up in Champ’s office instead, blubbering, covered in sweat and tears and snot. He barely remembers what it was that he was saying, but he has a pretty good sense of how morbidly pathetic it must have been.

He felt like shit throughout it all, and more, and it was dangerous, _he_ was dangerous, to himself, and others, but never as a Statesman. He had a grip on it, and he has never. _Never_. Let his team down before. And he’s their best. False modesty aside, and with all due and immense respect to Whiskey and Moonshine and Gin and Applejack, he fucking knows he’s their best, even if he never wanted to rise through the ranks.

He’s their best and he wasn’t there. He decided to chase the fucking rabbit. And it didn’t turn out bad, in the end, but it almost turned out very bad. Because the best that he is, he decided to go out and be a fucking stoner.

He wasn’t there.

* * *

The worst thing. The worst thing about it all. Is Jack. Is Whiskey. Is the utter fucking avalanche of betrayal.

He wonders if Champ knew. Or, as in, suspected something, saw the changes in him, saw some signs. Tequila didn’t know Jack before his wife’s death, only knew him in the aftermath. And he thought they were friends, is the fucked-up thing. They shared laughs. Gone to bars together, got drunk. Whiskey mentored him: they were both fucking great at lariat, it was a whole competition between them.

He inherits the lasso now. _Yours if you want it,_ Ginger says, and he feels a little ill looking at it. It’s not _the_ lasso, of course: the original got left half-stuck in a meat-grinder, with its owner, in the deep-ass of Cambodia. But it wasn’t the only one. Its replacement is in their armory should he accept. And he swallows the bile and makes himself want it. He’s good with this cowboy stuff. It’ll make an asset.

But. The fucked-up thing. Is this whole time, Jack looked at him and saw a piece of shit he couldn’t wait to scrape off his boot. Scrape off the face of the fucking earth. Saw him as vermin. And Tequila hates him for it. But hates himself more, because it’s not like Jack wasn’t right about him either; it’s not like he hasn’t simply lived down to the worst of his expectations.

* * *

Merlin takes a while to recover.

Eggsy’s unrestrainedly ecstatic when he wakes up the first time. It’s kind of refreshing, how he doesn’t try to shove his emotions deep down, just wears them on his sleeve like that. Tequila has always liked that about people.

Merlin stepped on a mine is what happened. Gave up his position as a distraction so that Poppy Adams’s people would defuse it. Tried to take them on after they were done anyway; triggered a secondary explosion; got shrapnel stuck in his leg and got beaten for his troubles.

“I don’t know why you would ever want to do this,” he tells Ginger flatly, once he wakes up, and she laughs, embarrassed. Makes Tequila hike his eyebrows up to hear it.

“I really do, though,” she admits softly.

“Hat’s off to you. I, for one, am never leaving the ops room. Ever again. Not ever.”

She laughs again. It’s maybe a little too loud. Tequila snickers, and her eyes turn murderous, but honestly, it’s precious. Two Ginger Ales, being sweet on each other.

She wants Whiskey’s position, she tells him later. He wants to congratulate her, easily, but it gets stuck in his throat for a good long while.

She knows why. They just sit there, in silence. She places her tiny hand on his broad shoulder.

“I know,” she says.

He squeezes her hand. “You’re gonna be great,” he tells her. _You’re gonna be so much better than him._

_Or me._

She makes him check in with her every twelve hours now. The antidote seems to be working, but it’s not like Poppy Adams was any kind of a chemist. She was a CEO. And a psychopath, let’s not split hairs about that either. It’s not like they can trust her to be any kind of reliable.

He goes in and out of medical every morning and evening. Ginger suggests, in an offhand manner, like it’s not something she is actively concerned about every minute of the day now, that he might try again: saying no to the drugs and the booze and meaning it this time. With the same air of nonchalance, like it isn’t a matter of life and death, he says that he’s game. He’ll do it this time. They act like it’s no big deal.

And he keeps bumping into the Brits. Sometimes literally, as he ends up running into Harry in the doorways to the clinic.

“Sorry, Harry,” he mutters, righting them both.

“It’s quite alright,” Harry nods stiffly.

It’s funny, finally seeing him like this, after getting to learn a completely different version of him. They just never imagined his memory block went so far back.

“I’ll miss hearing about the butterflies,” Tequila says with a wry smile. They used to talk about them a lot when it was Tequila’s turn to keep him company.

“I really won’t,” Harry snorts. It’s not a brush-off, just a fact. “It’s good to see you about, Agent Tequila.”

He even talks differently now; it’s real weird. A different person altogether. His eyes are different. He’s poised, carries himself as only a military man can. Burdened, too, and quietly confident in the way his younger self was clearly not. And it’s not like he doesn’t remember the months of being here either. There is a shape of their former selves between them: the lepidopterist and his warden. The footing’s different now, though. Tequila has seen him in action, knows his true worth. And, well, (he throws a guilty glance at the screen that hides Merlin’s bed,) Harry knows his worth too now or the complete lack thereof, he reckons.

Walking into the sick-bay, he sits down on an empty bed and waits for Ginger. It’s not like her to be running late, but these are unusual times, now that they’re short-handed, and the world is recovering from near peril.

Merlin’s curtain gets drawn away sharply, revealing his face. “Agent Tequila,” he greets him.

“Single Malt Scotch,” Tequila returns, and Merlin smirks.

“Touché.”

His leg is all bandaged up and restoring in alpha-gel. Even so, he probably won’t ever walk without a cane. You wouldn’t think so, what with the brain being the most complex organ in a human body, but it’s resilient like that, and tends to rebuild itself, and they have their trigger tests to fire up the pathways again. They have no such jumpstarts for broken bones and shredded muscle. The tibia of Merlin’s right leg has been replaced with a stainless steel rod, and there’s just nothing to be done about that.

“How does it feel, being a hero?” Tequila asks, forcing himself not to stare at the injury.

“Let’s put it this way: if I had to do it all over again, I _wouldn’t_ ,” Merlin says flatly. Tequila chuckles, and Merlin’s mouth quirks in a quick smile again.

“Last time I was in here,” Tequila says, leaning back lazily, “everything was so much simpler. Agent Sherry was gassed with rage-inducing chemicals and I had to subdue her. She broke my clavicle and my nose.”

“Not the compelling argument in favor of field work you might think it is,” Merlin says, cocking an eyebrow.

“Was it your first time ever?” Tequila asks. “Being in the field?”

“Of course not,” Merlin frowns at the idea. “I’m fully field-trained. I just prefer the alternative.”

Tequila shakes his head. “Doesn’t it make it harder? Don’t you want to step past all your screens and monitors and apply your own field training, make smarter choices for your agents?” He has been at Ginger’s side enough times in her ops room to have experienced the feeling. He always prefers to be in the field, making the tough calls himself.

“If that feeling ever exists, it’s fully outweighed by my comfort in knowing I never have to face down the world’s largest meat grinder,” Merlin says.

Whatever smart quip Tequila was about to make, it dies on his tongue. He swallows hard, and the silence that stretches between them tastes sour: they both know Merlin hasn’t plucked this particular example out of thin air.

“I’m—” Tequila hesitates for a moment, and studies the bed sheets with a frown. “I’m sorry about Agent Whiskey,” he says.

It smarts, is the funny thing. Even despite his utter betrayal, Tequila can’t think of him as anything but a desperately grieving man. He didn’t—doesn’t—wouldn’t have wanted Jack’s death. The details of it make something in his chest clench. He doubts Merlin would be very understanding of that feeling.

Merlin is silent for a long time. Tequila glances at him, and he has relaxed back into his bed and closed his eyes. If he’s really fallen back asleep or if he’s pointedly ignoring Tequila is hard to tell. It’s a few minutes before he speaks.

“My old boss,” he says slowly, “I’ve worked for him for ten years. Worked alongside of him for ten more before that. Never questioned anything about him. And then he sold out our entire organization for a chance at some social cleansing.”

The words make Tequila shiver. This kind of talk is not uncommon here, mostly in the form of zealots clamoring for racial purity, and Kentucky in particular is pock-marked with it.

“I’m not really in a position to judge you over Agent Whiskey’s morals,” Merlin says. “It’s not like everything has always been perfectly above board in our own backyard.”

He opens his eyes and looks over at Tequila, who manages a small smile. It’s as much of an absolution as he’s gonna get, and it’s more than he deserves.

* * *

Before the Brits leave, Tequila is adamant about showing them around Kentucky. The Kentucky that he knows and loves. It’s been all secrecy and panic and pain for them, and he wants them to have at least one fond memory from this mission—so that it’s not all a bloody church, and padded white rooms, and the aftertaste of their agency’s loss, the pain in their wounds, the shakes of an adrenaline burnout, the stab of betrayal.

It isn’t Derby season, which is a shame, ‘cause that one’s hilarious. The horses are majestic, but you really don’t go to Derby to look at the horses, you go there to look at the people who pretend they’ve come to look at the horses. All the snazzy hats and outrageous outfits, as if a painter’s palette threw up on a Christmas cracker. It’s wonderful, and bizarre, and, some would say, quintessentially Kentucky.

He still takes them to see racing at Keeneland. It’s a beautiful part of the country, and he wishes he could take them horseback riding, but Merlin’s leg is really not in any condition to support him in a saddle. From Keeneland, he takes them to Versailles—because Kentucky has one of their own, and because it’s a magnificent castle, and he thinks they’ll enjoy that, like a little piece of Victorianism. The castle doubles as a luxury hotel, and they wine and dine like lords, and Harry and Merlin share amusing anecdotes from their shared tenure as agents.

The following morning, as they’re driving back, he makes a detour to Lexington and takes them to his old rodeo gig. He’s met with a mixed reception.

“Ace,” Winnie greets him. Still working the ticket booth, five years later. It makes him feel inexplicably relieved, the knowledge that he got out, that this here is a bog that never changes, never goes anywhere. “Well, fancy seeing you again in our part of town, hun. You aren’t here to ask for your job back, are ya? Dave’s long gone, there’s no one to throw you a freebie.”

His smile covers his grimace. He very much doubts Dave would have thrown him a freebie, since, when he quit as Ace, Dave was this close to throwing him out on his ass. Anyway, he’s not here to debase himself.

“I’m not here for that, luv,” he says calmly. She doesn’t notice the brief surge of resentment and eagerly melts into his smile. “Who’s the bossman here now?”

“New fish, no one you’d know.”

“Point me in their direction?”

She does, and he slides her enough money to cover the entrée fee of four.

In the arena, they’re judging a bull riding competition. The four of them make their way closer to the ring, just as the bronc bucks off his rider, and a colorful person darts across the field, confusing the animal and providing an alternative target.

“That’s what I used to do when Champ recruited me into the Statesmen,” Tequila says, pointing at the rodeo clown.

He studies the man in the ring appraisingly: beneath the make-up, he’s young, younger than Tequila was when he quit; probably better than he was because of it. He runs the bull off as the others help the rider make his not-so-grateful escape, then swiftly jumps into the safety pen while the wranglers come out with ropes, to get the animal under control.

The sight still makes his heart pump: the job was a bit of a punishment, but sometimes it wasn’t. He protected people. And he was good at it. There was little else he wanted at that point.

“Did you dress like that, too?” Eggsy asks, mildly horrified.

“That’s the job,” Tequila chuckles. In some avenues, the bullfighter and the clown are two different jobs, but this is a small arena, so he used to be both the protector and the comic relief. It made kids laugh, and he loved entertaining them in between sessions.

Harry and Merlin smile into their drinks covertly. They’re older than Eggsy; they know better than to find clothes embarrassing, even if they do love their guissed up suits.

“This ain’t what I’m here for tonight,” he says, patting the railing. “Pardon me, gentlemen, while I make the arrangements.”

He’s supposed to be showing them Kentucky, not showing off. He’s not sure when his itinerary changed to include this or why. He doesn’t think on it too much. He makes his way over to the manager’s office and flashes his papers, which, he’s sure, do very little, but they’re followed up by a generous donation, which promptly makes the manager forget about the risks and adopt a ‘hey, it’s your funeral’ attitude. This has never been not a sleazy place.

The arrangement quickly makes it down the chain of command, and the competition’s briefly interrupted as Tequila makes his way to the chute. His eyes find the Brits and he tips his hat at them with a smirk. There are at least ten reasons why this is a terrible idea, and he’s just playing into his own weakness—that he gets off on being a risk-taker. Ginger Ale would kill him if she knew. There’s a one out of three chance that she will—if he returns home in a stretcher. He’s missed this, but he hasn’t done it in a while, and this is not like riding a bicycle.

He grips the handle with his right hand and raises his left hand in the air and nods at the guy manning the gate. The chute is opened, and the bull surges out into the ring, bucking wildly. Blood roars in Tequila’s ears, and all of his muscles tense as his body is locked-in for one purpose only: staying on top of the bull for as long as he can. The animal kicks, the air rushing out of its nostrils loudly, and it tries its best to unseat Tequila who is holding on for dear life. The roar of the crowd blends with the roar of blood rushing between his ears. He keeps his left arm balanced and precise, careful not to touch any part of the animal, as per the rules. His muscles ache, but it’s a good pain, his soul wants it, even if his body doesn’t.

The bull jerks furiously, and Tequila finally loses his balance. His arm slips, and he comes flying out of the saddle and lands on his back. The bull huffs and ignores him, having tired itself out. The rodeo clown performs a couple of pirouettes, just to make sure the animal isn’t about to stomp Tequila to death, and the wranglers get it back into the chute. The rodeo clown, the same young man from before, comes up to Tequila and offers him his hand, helping him get up.

“How many seconds was it?” Tequila asks from the ground.

“Seven. You nearly had him.”

Tequila grins, satisfied, and takes the boy’s hand, letting himself be hoisted to his feet. He waves at the crowd—the people don’t really care what’s going on in the ring as long as it gets the blood pumping—and he leaves the arena accompanied by cheers and whistles. His back will probably remind him of his graceless fall later. He carefully makes his way back to his companions.

“Impressive,” Harry says.

“That was _mental_ ,” Eggsy claps him on the shoulder, and Tequila winces slightly.

“The most dangerous eight seconds in sport,” Merlin comments, leaning heavily on his cane. “Why eight seconds, mind you?”

“That’s how long the adrenaline burst lasts. After that, the fatigue settles in, the animal stops bucking so much. It’s really more for their benefit than ours.”

“Nothing about this is for a human being’s benefit,” Merlin says dryly.

Tequila stretches around what will certainly be a bruise across his back and smiles. “You’d be surprised. You can’t imagine the feeling.”

Merlin lifts up his cane. “That’s because I’m not a masochist.”

Tequila shrugs demurely. He’s right, of course, it’s a crazy, dangerous risk designed for adrenaline junkies. Tequila’s just wired like that.

“You’ll be okay to drive us, Agent Tequila?” Harry inquires politely.

Tequila nods. “Let’s get you home, boys.”

* * *

A few days before the Brits are set to leave, Champ calls him into his office and says: “We should send one of our own with them. Help them rebuild. They’ve lost too many people, they’ll need help. And we need to have eyes over there to liaise properly. It’s a darn shame we lost touch in the first place.”

Tequila honestly thinks that Ginger Ale will go. She’s good at this stuff, and she knows the team, and likes them, and maybe likes Merlin in particular. But instead, Ginger gets herself promoted, just like she wanted.

“I’ll visit eventually,” she promises to all of them. “I mean, we should really establish a program. An exchange route, so that these things don’t go forgotten again. A joint task force, maybe.”

There’s a part of her that hasn’t stopped thinking like an analyst yet. It’s hard to let go of Ginger Ale; for her and for others, too. He’s still of half a mind to call her that. The new Ginger Ale is one of the Chen twins, an earnest enough young man. Knowledgeable, but lacking in confidence.

“Opinion?” Champ asks Tequila after Chen’s done a week’s worth of trial time.

Tequila shrugs. “He needs to learn. To man up. When agents are in the field, Ginger Ale calls the shots and we listen. He needs to grow some balls.”

Champ chuckles heartily, and then says, “I have a new assignment for you.”

And what Tequila thinks is coming is that Champ will make _him_ the new Ginger Ale. He’s been expecting it for days. Desk duty forever. It would make sense: he knows enough about the field, and he’s always been good enough that other agents can comfortably rely on his expertise. He can banter with them. He knows the operating system. He’d be better at it than Chen is. And, on the other hand, no more Mr. Loose Cannon to worry about. Wildcard gets shuffled out of the rotation entirely, sits on a desk like a pretty picture.

That isn’t the assignment. Tequila doesn’t know what to do with the _actual_ assignment. If it’s better, or if it’s worse, and whether or not it is still a punishment.

* * *

He sticks out in London like a sore thumb.

The first thing they do is procure another tailoring shop. Merlin worries about outfitting it with high-tech safeguards. Harry worries about the actual outfits. They do need to keep up appearances and certain standards.

“Too bad about Mordechai,” he says.

“Too bad,” Merlin agrees gravely.

“Is that another one of y’all fairy-tale characters?” Tequila asks.

“No. That was his actual name,” Harry says evenly, and Tequila shakes his head because, honestly, darn Brits.

They clothe him in a proper Kingsman wardrobe. Eggsy tells him something about bespoke suits that Tequila doesn’t really parse but the little guy’s excited over it. The costume does fit snugly, and it feels nice, but nothing to get your knickers in a twist over he doesn’t think.

“Bruv,” Eggsy drawls, looking at his boots. “Oxfords, not brogues.”

He has no idea what that means, while Eggsy squints at his shoes in puzzlement.

“Those aren’t brogues,” Harry says after a cursory glance and a resigned sigh.

Tequila looks between them and lifts his pant leg a little: still cowboy boots there; and it’s always gonna be cowboy boots if he has anything to say about it.

“Listen, fellas. You can take my hat. My chaps, my jeans, my bandana. But y’all at least gotta leave me with something of my own.”

Eggsy looks somewhat stricken, but Tequila has already said it: dress-up’s kind of stupid, and he doesn’t care for their over-complicated aristocratic fashion rules. He still looks pretty darn sharp in a costume, and he’s a stranger in a strange land here, where one must adapt, so he accepts the clothes, just to fit in. But there isn’t anyone looking at his darn shoes. Well, except for his new allies who stare at his feet like he has committed some cardinal sin. But a man’s gotta have his comforts, and he loves his boots, so the boots stay.

* * *

They rebuild.

The first thing they learn is that another one of their agents survived. Once they start moving funds and preparing a new infrastructure, she sees the activity in what remains of their old system and shows up on the steps of their new tailor shop, righteous mad. Her name’s Lancelot (but really it’s Roxy). She is in equal measure relieved that the three of them have returned to her, and furious that they didn’t look for her properly and left her behind, led her to believe they were all dead.

“She’s always been the smartest,” Harry points out. “Of course she would make it out alive.” He gives his friends a look. “What were the two of you thinking?”

“Good to have you back, Lancelot,” Merlin says, not giving in to the guilt-tripping.

“Sir,” she nods, and her posture is all relief that she has someone to answer to again.

Her and Eggsy hug. They don’t say anything to each other at all, but the feeling of mutual loss they have felt for these past couple of weeks is clear and overwhelming.

The designations get rearranged. There really _can’t_ be two Galahads, and Eggsy’s easy about it, he’s happy to bear another name. “I was just keeping the seat warm for you,” he tells Harry with a smirk. But the thing is, they also need an Arthur.

Harry doesn’t like it one bit. Says that maybe Merlin should be Arthur instead, except nobody can be Merlin but Merlin. They compromise that they will find Harry a suitable replacement in due time, a line of succession, and he will be the first Arthur who’s also a field agent. Harry has never wanted a desk job; has always expected to go out in the field, and Tequila can relate to that. He wonders if he regrets that he hasn’t: he’s less of a man now than he used to be; one-eyed; butterflies in his head; and he has killed several dozen innocent people. Which wasn’t his fault, but it’s still a memory that he carries with him. Tequila misses the lepidopterist sometimes. Feels bad for that quiet and gentle man who has hardened into this burdened one instead.

Still, they rebuild.

They start with a new atelier, and a small safehouse. But there’s enough Statesmen resources and old English money to go around for them to start outfitting a Camelot 3.0.

“We’ll need a new base of operations, first and foremost,” Merlin says. He’s hunched over a map, pondering over it.

“I have something in mind,” Roxy says. Merlin looks at her skeptically, and she says, “A castle.”

“A castle?” Eggsy repeats. “Where do you get off having a castle we could borrow?”

The three of them give Eggsy a blank stare.

“I think in your dallying with princesses of foreign nations you’ve forgotten that the Swedes aren’t the only titled nobility you know,” Roxy says, her tone dry and just a little bit haughty.

“You were the exception to the rule, as you will recall,” Harry says. “We usually choose from a particular class of people.”

“My father is Earl of Walsingham,” Roxy says. “A courtesy title. But I’m a Viscountess with a land.”

Eggsy whistles, but otherwise takes the news in stride. Tequila’s just playing catch-up at this point, feeling entirely out of his depth. They’re playing at knights, but also, apparently, not really playing? It still mostly seems funny to him. In Statesmen? The drinks are there to protect their identities in the field. Besides that, they’re mostly a joke. But here, the titles? They mean something. And it’s all a little bit too much pomp and ceremony for Tequila to handle.

“The class thing,” Eggsy remarks in the same conversation. “That’s gotta go. I ain’t gonna be the only exception anymore.”

Nobody argues with him on that.

Apparently, that was a whole thing, which Tequila is surprised to learn: they really don’t seem the type, despite their hoity-toity ranks. For all that the names are hilariously pretentious, Harry and his friends are all very unpretentious people. Easy to talk to. Not bowing to societal norms. They’re polite about everything, unquestionably, but they cut straight to the bone, no pretense, no bullshit. It’s the thing that Tequila likes the most about them and about his assignment here.

And as they start scouting for new agents to fill up their ranks, Harry still grouses about having to be in charge, but he’s glad to be the one calling the shots now. No more restrictions by class, or peerage, or parentage, or race, or gender.

Tequila proves to be an interesting detergent by virtue of simply existing.

They converge at Aldbury Castle, their new Camelot. There’s still a ton to be done: the castle has to be renovated, has to have the high-end technology implanted into its walls, transforming it into the fortress of the twenty-first century that befits a secret intelligence agency. They need to stock up on weaponry and gadgets and other paraphernalia. They need reliable staff: a bevy of maids, and chefs, and doctors, and groundkeepers, and a landscape artist. They need a treasury. They need to rebuild their servers, and to once again exist off the grid.

Amidst it all, they bring in their first batch of new potentials, because above all else: they need more than five people.

Meeting the recruits is a little bizarre: some of them are older than Eggsy and Roxy, and it’s funny to see them have seniority over thirty-somethings. But, as far as first impressions go, they seem to be a good fit. Except, then, the screening starts. And Tequila isn’t here on a vacation. He’s prepared to whip their uppity high cotton asses into shape.

He arrives a little after Merlin’s introduction speech. On castle grounds, out of sight of the London society and with no need to blend in, he allows himself to dress down to his comfort level. He’s missed wearing denim. And then comes the snickering. Which, fair. Nothing unexpected there, really. These fellas have been recruited into a knightly abode, promised a high-and-mighty lifestyle. And then there’s he. The dumb yank.

Merlin’s posture changes very slightly. He looks up at the trainees, eyes sharp and fast, and then at Tequila briefly. He says only two things.

The first is, “Agent Tequila. Would you like to demonstrate to this sad lot your expertise?”

Tequila grins. He whistles loudly for Barley and she comes galloping up to him, whickering gently. A gorgeous chestnut with smart eyes, coat gleaming in the sun. They have horses here: Tequila insisted that they should, isn’t it an English thing to do anyway, keeping a stable along with their castle? It elicits a few more chuckles from the group, because he’s literally just a horse-riding cowboy now. But then he flies up into the saddle with practiced ease and springs the horse. She tears into an immediate gleeful gallop, and Tequila frees his rifle. Wind blasting in his ears, he aims and takes down a target after a target after a target. The trainees didn’t even see that there was anything to shoot around them at all; the targets were all too far away. Too far away for most people to make the shots standing. Tequila can do it while riding a freight train at full speed.

He rides back, petting Barley’s withers, stroking her lean neck. As he approaches, Merlin’s smiling. It’s his tight flat smile, mostly hidden, but it makes Tequila grin helplessly. He might have been showing off a little there, and not for the trainees’ sake. He looks at the lot of them, green as grass, and tips his hat at them. “Agent Tequila, at your service,” he says, trying not to look completely smug.

(They have offered him to change aliases, since he’ll be staying here. Make him a Tristan or a Percival, or something. He refused. He’s become too fused with Tequila. It’s a name he doesn’t want to let go of.)

The second thing Merlin says to the trainees is, “Sorry you won’t remember any of that.” He scans over them briefly and says, “You. You. You. And you.” And stands up and makes four precision shots with his amnesia watch as the trainees sort of freeze up, not knowing what to do. Four of them slump to the ground. Another gift from the Statesmen, upgrading their amnesia tonic so that the ones who wash out won’t remember a thing. They don’t need another Charlie situation.

Tequila climbs down and looks at the four of them on the ground, caught in between surprise and embarrassment. He knows instantly why Merlin has axed them: they were the ones who laughed. But it isn’t a big deal, he isn’t surprised to be made fun of or found undesirable. It’s fine, really, it isn’t anything.

He looks up at Merlin who’s talking to the other trainees. He isn’t about to say anything in front of them and hangs back, stroking Barley’s nose and waiting for his moment. They’re all playing at modern knights here is what it is, that’s all. It makes them act overtly noble, if a bit impractical. Tequila is a guest here, and Merlin is just being charitable, it’s the British thing to do.

He waits until Merlin dismisses the lot before coming closer, leading Barley with him. Merlin’s eyes are focused on his tablet, examining whatever notes or profiles or whatever else he has there.

“You didn’t have to cut them like that,” he says quietly.

Merlin looks at him through his glasses, his face inscrutable. “Of course I did,” he says, like Tequila’s missing something terribly obvious.

Tequila shakes his head, annoyed. “They’re fine candidates. Eggsy and Roxy picked them out with care.”

“Then they need to do better. Anyone who makes split-second judgments like that is not someone we want,” Merlin says neutrally. He sets aside his tablet and strokes Barley’s neck absently. Tequila does the same and they’re silent for a while.

After a few minutes, Merlin says quietly, “If they laughed at me, because I’m crippled, would you stand for it?”

Tequila feels his chest flush with heat in instant indignation. “Of course not.”

“But you think they should be allowed to laugh at you? Because you’re American?”

Tequila squints, because that’s a completely disproportional comparison. “That’s not remotely the same,” he says.

“It’s an imperfect analogy,” Merlin says, “but I assure you that Harry and the kids would agree with me. You need a better sense of self-importance, Agent Tequila.”

He takes his hand back and packs away his tablet before heading back towards the castle. His movement with the cane is fluid, an extension of being a field-trained agent, in perfect command of his body. His limp seems no more pronounced than a hitch in his gait, hiding his day-to-day struggles.

Tequila watches him go. His chest feels tight. He isn’t sure what to do with this, the casual concern. The Statesmen have always cherished him, Champ would slice open a vein for him, has practically adopted him—but it’s never going to be enough to forget a lifetime of not mattering. He certainly does not expect Merlin or the others to treat him like… like a thing you should, or could be careful with.

He sighs and gently pulls on Barley’s reigns. “Let’s go, darlin’,” he mutters.

And they rebuild.

* * *

“Nobody’s gonna be shooting any more dogs,” Eggsy says. He’s pretty adamant on that point. They’re seated around a conference table, the five of them, hammering out the details of training the new crew.

“As it was the only thing that brought my memories back, I am disinclined to agree,” Harry says calmly.

“‘Cause it was bloody traumatic, Harry! That’s a rubbish reason.”

“Let’s postpone the dog issue,” Merlin says, uninterested in either side of the debate. “I have everything set up for our frame job operation. We administer the sleep drug with their evening meal tonight. They wake up at various locations, in makeshift prisons, framed for criminal activity. The task: to break out and navigate their way back. We’ll deduct points if they mention the Kingsmen, if they bring a tail with them, or if they otherwise compromise the secrecy and integrity of our facility. Let’s see how creative they can be, and how confident they are with no safety net.”

“Then we can go back to physical training. Shieldwork and blind-fighting are up next,” Roxy picks up.

“We didn’t have blind-fighting,” Eggsy frowns.

“More’s the pity,” she says stiffly.

Tequila smiles. He likes Roxanne. She’s like a miniature Ginger Ale—or, well, Agent Whiskey now. He supposes he should just call her by her given name these days, to avoid confusion—Elizabeth. Roxy and her would hit it off with a bang: they’re cut from the same cloth, the anxious perfectionists.

Harry gives them a sense of direction, and he’s creative, always willing to try new things. He’s still spreading his wings, unused to being in charge, but the project sprouts under his guidance. And he’s always willing to give people a chance. Merlin is the observer, wielding the hard facts, always on the lookout for true excellence, sifting out the capable and the competent and those willing to fight to survive. Eggsy is all passion, eager to rebuild, to offer guidance to their new flock in the same way it was once offered to him. Tequila is certainly familiar with the impulse. He’s looking for good hearts, for enthusiasm on par with his own, for people who need a place and a purpose they can commit to. Roxy is all about stability and integrity, and always finds room for improvement. She’s what you’d call a practical idealist: a hard worker, objective and grounded, but she might just be the most moral of them all. Tequila doesn’t think she knows it herself, how highly principled her outlook is. She’s a far lighter shade of gray than all her friends who had to be flexible at one point or another in a way she wouldn’t be able to.

What Tequila brings to the table is experience and a measure of protection. His job here could have just been that of a lifeline thrown over the ocean and towards the Statesmen—a liaison and an ambassador. A pretty fixture. But he’s also a field agent with more years under his belt than Roxy and Eggsy, and he knows ways in which trainees can be tested, knows Statesmen policies by rote, which are a welcome innovation to how Kingsmen used to do things. And his new friends are willing to listen.

And that’s what they are. Friends. Him and Harry are slowly rediscovering their pre-existing banter. It’s sharper now, and less filled with factoids about insects, but it’s nonetheless familiar. Roxy welcomes him with open arms, treats him like a long lost acquaintance, and he just plays along until it feels true. Merlin seems to have forgiven him their several false starts and soured first impressions. He’s acerbic, but Tequila enjoys that about him, and Merlin seems to return the sentiment.

Out of all of them, Tequila really gets on best with Eggsy. Should have guessed from his name, or maybe his demeanor, that he’s a little bit not like the others. Tequila doesn’t understand Britain’s class division, but he picks up on it enough from Eggsy’s patchwork explanations. That he’s from the slums, too. That Harry isn’t, but Harry’s a _fucken genius_ , apparently, to hear Eggsy talk. Roxy as well, she’s absolutely _banging_ , and a lot of pricks their age are still bogged down in tradition, but not her. It all comes back to their earlier conversation, how Eggsy had been the exception, not the rule, and how it’s all gonna be different now.

Tequila is not unfamiliar with the way Eggsy talks about people: it’s a poignant recognition, like seeing his own reflection in a mirror. Eggsy talks about his friends and those that came before like they all shit gold, with the same earnest admiration that Tequila holds for his own team. They’re good at what they do, the both of them: Tequila never sells himself short, he knows that when he’s good at something, he’s good at it, and Eggsy knows the same thing about himself. But they are not those people. Those better, golden people.

“What about Merlin?” he asks, when they’re talking about it.

Eggsy shrugs. “Dunno. He’s not like them. But he’s not like me either. I think he’s just from Scotland.” Which is apparently a whole other fight entirely.

Not that that’s the point. The point is: Eggsy has given up on everything in his life at one point, and was trashed and slapped around, and his life was going to shit. And he _gets_ it.

Tequila can say a thing sometimes. About slumming it. About spending a night in jail not because the mission requires it, so you don’t really feel it, uplifted and comforted by your sense of duty, but spending it for real, when you have no idea when your life took such a sharp turn, and why exactly it is you who’s getting shafted. About bar fights that are just for the sake of feeling pain in your body and knowing that you’re alive. About how the upper class stare feels on your person, like they want to throw a drape over you and forget that people like you exist.

Tequila tells him a lot of these things, and Eggsy gets them.

* * *

It doesn’t end with the first five snickers. Sometimes, the resentment is more deep-seated than that.

For the most part, the new kids respect him for the skill he can offer. He teaches them horseback riding tricks, and everything you can do with a rifle, long range and close quarter combat, and every other trick in the book he can think of. They listen. Or most of them do. As far as he can tell—and after a lifetime spent on the streets, relying on his gut, Tequila’s really good at reading people—there’s only one recruit who isn’t entirely okay with Tequila. His name is Osborne, and he comes from old money, and he has _notions_ about American influences. But he keeps it under wraps, which is good enough for Tequila: not letting personal interfere with professional is a good quality to have, what more can they ask. Merlin keeps a critical eye on the guy and presses his lips into a thin line and shakes his head when Tequila mentions it. “This is why you’re not in charge of cuts.”

Still, because Tequila insists on it, Merlin doesn’t judge him harsher than the rest. It’s all very fair, which is how he lasts as long as he does. Some of his scores are phenomenal, and it’s a real pity he’s an undeterrable prick. But the tally of undesirable behavior just keeps rising, and they gave him a shot all right, but at a certain point when someone doesn’t learn you just have to say that enough’s enough. There is nothing comforting in Merlin’s cold, “You’re going home,” when that moment comes.

And Osborne’s been a tightly wound fella, for sure, and this just makes him explode. It’s almost scary. Scary, as in, Tequila has never seen anyone yell at Merlin like that, spittle flying in the air close enough to land on his face. Scary, as in, he’s aware that Merlin probably knows about thirty-seven ways to kill the guy on the spot, and he’s really testing his patience here. Scary, as in, you don’t fucking yell at someone like Merlin.

The tirade spirals down into petty, really telling insults.

“Like I fucking needed this bullshit anyway, who the fuck wants to be a part of an “independent,” (and yes, the air quotes are audible,) “agency that is supposed to safeguard Britain, but you’re all just busy sucking America’s cock.” He looks at Tequila balefully. “I mean, I guess I understand, his cock must be very suckable.”

Tequila raises both eyebrows and chuckles. “Thanks, sugar,” he says, and he knows it was meant as a roundabout insult, but he ain’t gonna play this game. The boy grows even redder around that ugly scowl of his.

“What a mouthy little bigot you’re proving to be,” Merlin says flatly. There’s something frightening in how deceptively calm he’s remaining, frightening and thrilling.

The boy looks around himself furiously, at the people who were supposed to be his teammates. He’s finding no sympathy in their eyes. Some of them are angry, others ashamed—that’s about it.

“You all are fucking idiots if you’re buying into this drivel. “Independent” my ass. It’s just what those fuckers across the pond want is a way to control us, control our way of life. Thinking they’re hot shit, owning the whole fucking world.” He peers at Merlin, his eyes narrowed into ugly slits. “How does it feel having America’s cock so deep up your ass?”

“Okay. I think that’s quite enough,” Merlin says. But before he can even raise his wrist, Osborne’s yelling suddenly ends in a short yelp and he falls over.

One of the other recruits is standing over him, a girl, Meera. She’s holding a varmint that she used to cold-cock him.

“Couldn’t agree more, sir,” she says, half-cheeky half-deferential.

Merlin arches an eyebrow, but all he says is, “Nice job.”

They all stand there, looking at where the body has slumped.

“What will happen to him?” Meera asks quietly. Her fingers are white with how tight she’s holding the rifle. They know what happens if you wash out, in theory, but also, it’s been four months. You don’t just send a person back out into the world with a months’ worth of amnesia.

“Ever seen the movie _Paycheck_?” Merlin asks. She shakes her head. “A guy works on patented technological advancements, and, to protect the corporate IP, the companies subject him to memory wipes. It’s all contractual and everything. We’ll return the boy home. Forge documents that he was working on something classified. Something like a think tank.”

“You think they’ll believe a sci-fi story?” she frowns.

“People believe in all kinds of conspiracies. Plus, it makes us look way scarier than we are. Nothing like a good boogeyman story to keep people in check. And it’s four months of life he’ll never get back. It’s only what he deserves, wouldn’t you say?”

Meera swallows and throws an uneasy glance at Tequila, then at her friends. She isn’t much concerned with Osborne anymore. She’s thinking of herself at this point, and her own training. None of them want to be subjected to this. Lose parts of themselves. Lose this chance. It’s gonna make them work that much harder—which, Tequila guesses, is exactly the intention behind Merlin’s cautionary tale.

The trainees start dispersing and Merlin turns away from them, buries his nose in his tablet, makes a few notes, probably already making preparations to send the boy home. Meera lingers. She’s one of their better candidates, Tequila’s really rooting for her to make it all the way. She’s got imagination, which is a thing that will save your neck in a sticky situation, and she’s got a wicked sense of humor, which has no bearing on the job at all, but it’s something Tequila appreciates privately.

“Sir,” she walks up to him, eyes darting towards Merlin uncertainly, not sure if they are within earshot or not. “I saw you practice with the lariat the other day. I was wondering if you might be willing to share some of those tricks.”

Tequila considers it. The lariat for him is still stained with memories of Jack, and also a point of personal history and personal pride, something he considers his own, in one of his un-mentor-like moments. He probably needs to get over himself.

“Sure,” he says. “I’ll put it on the itinerary.” He smiles at her.

Meera looks at him with a slightly furrowed brow and pushes her hair behind her ear, dropping her eyes. “No, sir,” she says. “I meant… just me.”

Tequila looks at her, and then it’s his turn to throw Merlin a quick furtive glance, because suddenly he can see very well what’s happening here. He can read it perfectly in her entire body language. He’s been on the receiving end of it a hundred times: women who are awkwardly battling their shyness but still trying to make a move. He’s always been quick to pick up on it and take the lead, make it easy on them. This is not one of those cases.

“I can’t give you an unfair advantage, Thompson,” he says lightly, still smiling, playing it off as if he didn’t notice the hint in her voice at all. She nods and mumbles an apology before quickly making a beeline for the castle, catching up with her friends. He’ll deal with it if she keeps trying. She’s a lovely woman, but she’s his trainee, and if there’s anything Tequila has learned over the years it’s that you’re not supposed to shit where you eat.

He watches her go, wondering if this is something he should be worried about, then shakes his head. They have more immediate concerns. He softly approaches Merlin where he’s politely pretending he didn’t notice this little exchange. Maybe he didn’t. If he did, he certainly doesn’t comment on it.

“Sorry about what that prick said,” Tequila offers lightly, eying Osborne’s unconscious body.

Merlin snorts, looking up from his tablet. “I’m sure my ears have heard much worse. Help me carry him inside. We need to prep him for transport.”

Tequila lets out an exaggerated sigh, but leans down and picks up the boy, slings him over a shoulder with ease. He has these muscles not for nothing. Merlin throws him a glance from under his brow, and his throat twitches.

“What?” Tequila asks with a laugh.

“Nothing,” Merlin says. He makes some final adjustment on his tablet, then slides it into his briefcase.

“Not getting any younger here,” Tequila says, adjusting the weight of the body across his shoulder.

Merlin nods sharply and picks up his things. “Let’s go,” he says, making his way towards the castle. Tequila could probably move faster than that but he falls in behind Merlin at an unhurried pace.

* * *

“Here are some possible locations for you,” Tequila says, dropping off a flash drive at Merlin’s office a few days later.

“Thank you.” Merlin picks it up and plugs it in, lets the information fan out over his multitude of screens. He rolls his chair backward, allowing himself a better view of it all.

They’re gonna be sending the remaining trainees on a plane ride. Merlin’s all set to simulate a technical malfunction on board. There’ll be knock-out gas. The plane will safely land, and the trainees will be transported into a wilderness area with a fabricated crash site, where they will awaken. The goal is, as always, to test their limits, as well as survival skills, and coping strategies. There will be traveling with a couple of persons of interest that they’ll be instructed to guard—both vetted by Merlin and Roxy extensively. It won’t be made clear if they’re safeguarding allies or transporting prisoners. The couple will feign injury. Their medical staff will make sure it looks convincing. How the trainees will handle the situation and where their bias will fall will all make it into their evaluation.

It’s what you call a battle-proofing scenario. Bad things happen, and everything may be out of your control, and you have to learn to roll with the punches. Not let your brain be overwhelmed by sensory input. Let go of anxiety and fear, and adapt.

Tequila has been working on several mock-up models for the crash site. The terrain is different in each scenario, and he’s been having fun with how to pit them against the environment. He pulls up a chair and looks at the screens with Merlin.

“I like the coastline crash,” Merlin mentions quietly, his eyes still scanning the models, absorbing the details. Tequila isn’t sure if it’s even aimed at him. Merlin picks up his tablet and starts doing some calculations of his own. After a few minutes of silence, he sets the tablet down and throws Tequila a glance, like he’s surprised to still find him here. “Something else you need?”

Tequila shrugs and leans back in his chair. “Your ops center reminds me of Ginger Ale’s,” he says. He spent many evenings in her office, just unwinding. “I like the quiet.”

“Hm,” Merlin says, and returns to whatever was occupying him on his screens, his fingers ghosting over the keyboard softly. He’s not turning Tequila away, but he doesn’t look to be expecting further conversation either.

“You ever get up with her?” Tequila asks after a few minutes of silence, peppered only by the quiet clacking of keys.

This earns him a pause and a sharp look over the glasses.

“Ginger,” Tequila elaborates. “I mean, the new Agent Whiskey.”

“ _Get up with her?_ ” Merlin repeats, his tone pointedly flat.

Tequila rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Like, keep in touch?” Language barrier.

Merlin scoffs and mutters, “Your vocabulary is abysmal. Also, don’t you?”

Tequila shrugs, pushing off the floor with his legs and letting the chair roll him towards the wall, then pushing at the wall and traveling back to Merlin’s work station. He does… but doesn’t. She messages him frequently, gushing excitedly over every aspect of being in the field. He answers sparsely, about one time out of four. He still feels guilty in front of her. It’s not even that he’s disappointed her, it’s that he’s embarrassed himself the most to her. Out of everyone, she knows best, even better than Champ, or at least as good as, just how much of a fuck-up Tequila truly is. How much could have been avoided if he fucked up less.

“You know, I thought they’d make me the new Ginger Ale,” he says conversationally. Merlin has returned his attention to the monitors, but he hums in response, still listening.

“Stick you behind a desk?” he asks. “Why on Earth would anyone do that?”

Tequila pulls a cigar out of his front pocket and rolls it between his palms without intending to light it, just a nervous habit. “Well. Because,” he says. “What else am I good for?”

Merlin stops typing again and this time he swivels around in his chair, focusing all of his attention on him. Tequila stares at the floor, feeling the weight of his gaze on his skin. His throat is itching for a drink he won’t allow himself to have.

“I let them all down,” he says, directing it at his boots, mostly. “The world was ending, and I was lying in alpha-gel and cryogen because I like to drink and smoke pot. I failed my team. I failed _your_ team. You and them had to deal with Whiskey—old Whiskey, Jack—and it was my job. He should have been my responsibility.”

His eyes travel to Merlin’s cane and he swallows. _Maybe other things wouldn’t have happened either,_ he thinks, but he isn’t brave enough to say it.

Merlin’s quiet for a long time. He doesn’t go back to whatever he was working on, he’s studying Tequila, weighing something. When he speaks, it’s not what Tequila expects to hear.

“I fucked your country,” he says, and the words are so sharp they startle him: Merlin has a soft voice and pristine manners, and Tequila’s hard-pressed to remember ever hearing him curse. “Probably many countries, not just yours.”

Tequila blinks up at him. Merlin takes off his glasses and carefully wipes them with a soft cloth.

“I’m surprised no one has called me out on it, to be honest. What Poppy Adams did—no, what your president did? His argument was: let them all burn, they’re junkies, right?” Tequila swallows, and nods, feeling a knot of shame roil in his stomach because it applies to him. “But we didn’t,” Merlin says. “Because innocent people were affected.” He’s looking at Tequila pointedly and, without his glasses, his eyes are dark and unsettling, too naked, too large, like two black holes. “That didn’t really occur to me when we were trying to stop Valentine, though. He implanted everybody who agreed with him with explosives near the base of their brain. An insurance policy.” Tequila nods. He’s heard this story before, from Eggsy. “But not everybody was bold enough to oppose him like, say, Princess Tilde. There might have been a fair amount of people who tried to exercise caution. People who resisted at first and then gave in out of fear. People who were afraid to die. People who wanted to protect their families. And I went and mass-triggered them all.” He falls silent for a bit. Examines his glasses critically and puts them back on. “It seemed like a smart move at the time. Seemed righteous.” He sighs and leans back in his chair. “And then half of your White House is dead, and half the world is thrown into crisis because a hell of a lot of politicians said yes, and they’re gone now. And then that Secretary of Commerce asshole becomes the next in line of your succession, and suddenly you have a president that decides that it’s alright to sacrifice millions of people. Because he’s an immoral fucking fascist.”

Tequila squeezes his fists and thinks of something to say. This isn’t right, what Merlin is saying. He might not be blameless, but he isn’t to _blame_ for playing into the hands of monsters. Tequila can’t really find the words.

“My point is,” Merlin says softly, looking down at his hands. “You think you’re saving the world, and you think you have accounted for everything—you’re a bloody analyst for Pete’s sake. And then you look around, and you’ve ruined more than you’ve saved. My point is. You sit in this room, and it feels like you’re in control of everything. And then life bellies up to you, and punches you right in the teeth.” He looks at Tequila again, his expression tired and oddly compassionate. “So you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Agent Tequila.”

* * *

“I have a thought,” Merlin says at their next meeting. “About the whole shooting-the-dog business. A penultimate test, if you will.”

“This better be good, Merlin,” Eggsy presses his mouth into a disagreeable flat line.

“No dogs,” Merlin says placatingly. “I would like to put each of them, in order, in a room with one another. Person A will be briefed and in on the test, Person B won’t be. Person B will be told that we have a traitor in our midst—Person A—and that killing them is the only way out.”

“Very Abraham and his son,” Harry says.

Merlin shrugs. “It’s the same principle as the dog test. In some ways, it’s worse, in others, better. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. Maybe Person A talks them down and they want to investigate before taking the matters further. Maybe they take the shot, because sometimes that’s the job. Either way, we learn something. And once Person B passes, they become the bait, and we do a chain of them. Observe them in both roles.”

“One small problem,” Harry says. “Who’s gonna play bait for the first person in that chain, if Person A has to be in on it? Who will they be shooting?”

Merlin looks up calmly. “I was thinking, Agent Tequila.”

Tequila blinks. “Me?” he chuckles. “That’s a stupid plan, Merlin. Those guys don’t care a lick about me.”

“I beg to differ,” Merlin says, and brings up a file on the screen. Meera Thompson, 29, one of Roxy’s candidates. Family tracing back to the wave of immigration out of West Indies during the 1940s. Has worked her way out from Brixton. Tequila feels his face flush in spite of himself, because he knows what is about to be said.

“She’s a little in love with you,” Merlin says, his voice both amused and merciless.

“Yeah, but—” Tequila scoffs, embarrassed, and raises his palms, like he’s trying to swear off it. He isn’t sure what he’s trying to say here. “I never—” he tries again, flushing even harder.

Merlin’s face is perfectly impassive, but he does help him out. “I understand. We cannot fault the girl for having eyes.”

“Do you have a proposed order?” Harry asks. “Are you leaning into their personal biases? People they like, people they have quarrels with?”

The conversation goes on, focused purely on the trial at hand, and it takes Tequila a few moments to realize that there was an off-handed compliment in what Merlin said to him.

He isn’t exactly sure what to do with it.

* * *

“They’re coming together in a good way,” he mentions to Merlin a few days later. They’re back in the ops center again, looking over the footage of another exercise. Merlin doesn’t seem to mind that he keeps dropping by, and Tequila lets himself abuse his hospitality on an evening-to-evening basis. “No more cuts, I think.”

“You may be right,” Merlin says slowly. He doesn’t sound completely sure, but close enough.

“The most important part of the training is the _esprit de corps_. That’s something we can’t teach, that’s something that has to happen naturally. They need to believe that our cause is a worthy one. That us prevailing is the right thing. That their comrades will have their back, and their superiors will never let them down. I think they’re getting there. Nothing beats live experience but based on the results we’re getting, I would trust them to go on missions.”

“Mm,” Merlin says noncommittally, but it doesn’t sound like a disagreement. “They also feel at home here. Another good sign. They’ve read the room, they know the playing field, now they can relax here.”

“Speaking of home,” Tequila says, stretching in the chair he’s come to think of as ‘his’. “When this batch of chickens is hatched, I was thinking of going back.”

Merlin stills. It would be an imperceptible shift, but in such close quarters, it’s hard to miss that he tenses up.

“This isn’t, as we’ve discussed, a banishment,” he says carefully. “I’m sure Agent Champagne will be glad to have you back.”

Tequila thinks about it for a moment. It’s not what he meant, but for a second he allows for it to be what he meant, and imagines being back in Kentucky. It doesn’t feel as unavoidably right as it used to.

“I just meant for a visit,” he says mildly. “I’m not going far.”

Merlin looks at him, slightly caught off guard by the sentiment. “That’s—good. Good to hear.”

“You have any family?” Tequila asks, curious.

“None to speak of,” Merlin leans back in his chair and studies him, startled but not opposed to this conversation.

“I haven’t seen my family in over fifteen years,” Tequila admits. It’s both a point of personal loss and personal shame. “I left home when I was fifteen. Thought I was doing my mom a favor. Financially, maybe I was. Not emotionally, but I hardly thought about that at the time.”

“And you never went back?” Merlin frowns.

Tequila cracks his knuckles to give his unrestful hands something to do. “The reasons for my leaving never changed. And then it just became too hard. I haven’t amounted to much, not until joining the Statesmen, and I can’t really talk about that, so I’d be coming home empty-handed, or lying. I’ve sent them money ever since I had a steady paycheck. Not sure if they believe it’s from me.”

“And you’re thinking of visiting them now, after all these years?” Merlin asks. He sounds incredulous, and Tequila isn’t sure if it’s because he thinks it strange or stupid.

“I think it might be time,” Tequila confesses. He wishes he didn’t sound so uncertain about it.

He rolls the chair up to Merlin’s work station and slides his hand into his pocket, pulling out a handful of tokens and spreading them across the desk—five nearly identical coins.

“I found these in one of my jackets yesterday. Nearly forgot that I had them.”

“And these are?” Merlin lifts an eyebrow.

“Mining tokens. It’s a stupid currency, one more way for corporations to make life harder for the miners. But that’s not the point. The point is, look. They’re stamped with a ‘ **K** ’ and an ‘ **S** ’. I think it was the coal company’s initials, I’m honestly not sure. But now I look at it, and it just seems to me like it says Kingsman and Statesman. Such a strange coincidence.”

He traces over the letters on one of the coins, then pushes it towards Merlin with his index finger. Merlin picks it up and studies it.

“They’re from my dad, back when he was alive and a miner,” Tequila says casually. Merlin looks up at him, folding this piece of information away, but not saying anything. “I had them, but I never looked at them much. It always made me miss home, and I’ve made avoiding real feelings into an art form. So I just… forgot they were in that jacket, apparently.” He pushes the coins aimlessly, shuffling them around on the table. “What I’m trying to say is, I look at them now, and I still miss my family, but I also see something different. Our partnership, if you will. They stand for something better now, at least in my mind.”

He looks up at Merlin, and they are sitting very close now, both hunched over tiny little coins. He’s startled to discover that he’s close enough to see Merlin’s eyelashes behind his glasses, the perpetual thoughtful frown of his forehead, the age lines around his eyes. His eyes. Always so dark and so intense, looking right back at him—and Tequila flushes, because he knows Merlin is noticing him too.

Quickly, he slides one of the tokens over to Merlin’s side, then rolls his chair backward. “Take it,” he says. “I’d like you to have one.”

“Thank you,” Merlin says reflexively. He seems surprised. He picks up the token and looks at it, then puts it away in his vest pocket. Tequila watches him do it, watches his fingers press down over his chest.

He hasn’t thought about Merlin’s words about Meera since that meeting—it was a passing remark, nothing more to it—but he’s thinking about it now. _Can’t fault her for having eyes_ , he said, and Tequila hasn’t followed that thread to wherever it might lead, it wasn’t something he allowed himself to think about. He’s a needy person, needy for company and people, and he is liable to imagine depth where there is none. But he wonders, in this moment, them sitting so close and watching each other, if what it meant is that Merlin might have eyes for him as well.

Chest pounding, he pushes his chair even further back, letting it roll away and putting some space between them. Merlin lowers his eyes, the moment broken. His hand traces over his breast pocket again and he rights his tie and turns back to his monitors, like nothing is out of the ordinary. And Tequila can’t tell if this is all just in his head.

He stands up hastily, feeling like he’s finally outworn his welcome. No, not even that, but the pressure of the moment is mounting up to something unbearable, and he can’t pretend he cannot feel it.

“I’ll send you the outlines on what I have for their final test,” he says.

“Looking forward to it,” Merlin nods, still not looking at him.

“See ya,” Tequila says, forcing himself to act normal. He lets his hand brush over Merlin’s back in parting, just absently. A casual touch that happened between them before, but he feels the muscles in Merlin’s back stiffen under his palm today and he quickly retracts his hand.

“I’ll see you later,” he says again, even though he just said it.

“Mm,” Merlin hums in acknowledgment.

Tequila leaves his office in what is one of his least graceful exits. He’s supposed to be good at this, he’s the suave one, but the whole situation has completely thrown him.

He worked a lot of cases as a Statesman, and before you can commence with the fieldwork and the spywork, you have to do the investigative work. He used to pour over clues with Elizabeth—snippets of information coming at them from around the world, sifting the wheat from the chaff, like putting together a puzzle. He likes to think he’s rather good at it. And a part of him, that investigative part, has just alerted like a hunt dog.

He puts his hands in his pocket and jiggles the tokens there on his way back to his room, letting his fingers play with the metal nervously. He tries telling himself he doesn’t have all the pieces—or _any_ of the pieces, really. He has no business thinking up things. It’s just a shapeless hunch is what it is… But the trouble is, he’s never had a hunch that didn’t pan out. And he can’t stop thinking about the look in Merlin’s eyes.

* * *

They talk about it exactly once. It’s mostly a tasteful conversation. Tequila never pries into the affairs of others, it’s not something that interests him in the slightest. But here, he just had to. Because. Come on. A princess?

The conversation happens carefully, months after the relationship has ended. Eggsy doesn’t mind that it hasn’t worked out in his favor.

It’s the one thing in which they differ. For all of their shared past and shared commiserations, Eggsy knows that he’s been dealt a shit hand in life, but he has never thought less of himself just because the world got it wrong. He knows exactly who he is, and who he strives to be. So it doesn’t shock him to be dating a Swedish Princess. Doesn’t shock him what happens to him next, either.

Or, well, it _shocks_ him, in the ‘I know they all can behave like ponces, but he ain’t one, and I ain’t either’ way, but he’s pitifully in love with Harry anyway. Not that he notices right off the bat, but that’s his own lack of self-awareness. So yeah, it shocks him to realize that they’re in love, but it doesn’t shock him that Harry loves him in the general sense of the word. Eggsy has never thought of himself as someone undeserving of love. It’s probably his greatest gift, is that unblemished self-confidence.

That’s never been the case for Tequila. It has always been the opposite for him.

It doesn’t shock him when people want him. He knows he’s desirable, for many reasons. For reasons of his chiseled torso, and his charming hick disposition, and wrestling with bulls, and his winsome smile. He’s good at sex, too. It paid for quite a few nights for him, when he was traveling through Kentucky.

(He likes tits. Never questioned it. He was simply hurting for money, really hurting, and needed food, and sometimes medicine, or a warm bed, and then the person offering isn’t totally repellent, so you don’t think about it. Suck a couple of dicks. It isn’t anything. Just another way to earn a buck. Better than lying in a ditch.)

The point is: people want him. Want him frequently, it’s kind of an ace up his sleeve. Jack used to be quite the player in the past: Tequila heard stories, but he never saw him in action—the one time they were on assignment and Jack had to get his flirt on, he completely fell apart. So Tequila stepped in, because it’s something he knows how to do, as true as he knows how to not get bucked off a bronc. He knows the flirting game. After that, they only sent Tequila on this sort of assignment. He’s even caught Elizabeth looking once or twice. It isn’t anything.

But that’s all it is. He’s where you park for a while—a romp in the hay, or two, and then you move on and forget about it. He’s the dog you pet, then leave outside in the rain, and it stalks your porch and looks yearningly into the window, but you don’t let him inside because he’s kind of gross. That’s the kind of a guy he is. A good lay. Not so good of a relationship material.

Which is where this gets so complicated. ‘Relationship’ is a layered word. He already _has_ a relationship with all these people. A good, working relationship. Maybe the best in his life, save for Kentucky. Maybe the best in spite of Kentucky, because Kentucky’s now laden with feelings of guilt and him letting everyone down, and he is free of that here in Britain. He loves Kentucky, he will always love it, his heart’s the shape of it, but the people here make him feel okay with himself.

So he doesn’t know what to do with Merlin looking. Noticing him in that way that people have been noticing Tequila his entire life. He’s never had a pre-existing relationship with anyone he’s had sex with. He doesn’t sleep with friends. So he has no idea what to do here without fucking it up.

And he does want to do something.

He only has to let himself think about it once, about what Merlin might possibly want with him, for his mind to shift gears instantly. Suddenly he can’t stop thinking about it. His sarcasm. The way he’s a genius with tech, it’s nearly sorcerous. The way his face folds before he’s about to verbally annihilate someone. The way he laughs, low and throaty. The way he sings, quietly and rarely, late into the night when the lot of them get drinks together. Tequila hasn’t wanted anyone in a long time, and the response in him, when he lets himself think about it, is right there below the surface and electrifying.

And he doesn’t know what to do about any of it. Friendship and desire is not something he knows how to mix—not without ruining everything for both of them. He just wants it easy. To sit on both chairs at once. Maintain the equilibrium. The flirting game that he’s so good at has nothing to do with what’s happening here, or what he wants. He knows how to make the first move in a number of ways, it isn’t hard. But he doesn’t know how to do it when there are stakes involved. It possibly requires more bravery than what he’s got.

* * *

He takes a few days to come to any sort of a decision. Not a plan, not anything even remotely resembling a plan, just gathering up his courage to even breach the possibility. He finds Merlin where he always is, in his ops center. It’s late in the evening, and everyone has already turned in for the night, but Merlin always stays up, burning that midnight oil. Tequila stops in the doorway and watches him work. He’s squinting at something miniscule on one of his monitors and typing.

“I thought you might like some company,” Tequila says quietly.

Merlin doesn’t turn. “I don’t mind it,” he says absently, which isn’t an exciting start, but it’s Tequila’s own fault, for making the statement sound so neutral.

It’s a little outside of his usual ballpark. Usually, he doesn’t have to try hard to convey innuendo: it’s already happening organically, it’s expected by the other party, conjured up naturally by the moment. It’s not exactly expected now.

He goes up to Merlin’s desk and leans over his chair, right up in his personal space, looking at the screen. It’s more technical upgrades for the properties they’re acquiring: they all need to be outfitted to serve as high-tech safe houses.

Merlin shifts uncomfortably in Tequila’s shadow and leans away. “What are you doing?” he asks sharply.

“I said, I thought you might like some company,” Tequila repeats and looks at him, and he makes his voice sound different, low and leading.

Merlin looks at him like he grew a second head. His expression is far from enticed, and Tequila folds under his gaze, feeling stupid and self-conscious about trying too hard. There’s no trace of that look that Merlin gave him earlier. He looks at him and doesn’t see a suave cowboy, he never has, has always been undistracted by posturing.

“Are you all right?” he frowns, his tone the opposite of inviting.

“I—okay,” he mumbles, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he says honestly. “I was just—I thought—” he can’t seem to finish a sentence, and Merlin is still looking at him like he might be ill.

“I’m not doing this right,” Tequila sighs, then rolls his shoulders, shrugging off his denim jacket. “Let me just…” he hangs it over an empty chair, then looks at Merlin, and, like taking a plunge, inhales deeply and drops down to his knees.

Merlin’s fingers grip his armrests tightly, but he doesn’t try to withdraw.

“Just… please… okay?” Tequila murmurs softly, without actually articulating anything, and leans forward and brushes his mouth over Merlin’s. It’s a brief moment, as unintrusive as possible. He’s not about to be presumptuous here. Merlin’s lips part slightly, seemingly answering. “This okay?” Tequila whispers, pulling back a little.

“I don’t mind it,” Merlin says stiffly, just like he did a moment ago, and Tequila smiles and kisses him again, this time with purpose.

It’s still just lips at first, just this gentle grazing. He traces the outline of Merlin’s mouth, feels the rasp of his evening stubble and kisses that instead, kisses the underside of his jaw, then goes back to his mouth again. This time, Merlin pushes into the kiss a little, and Tequila opens up for him eagerly, feels the careful flick of his tongue.

He rests his fingers at the back of Merlin’s skull, bringing them closer, and lets his tongue go everywhere. He might have botched the conversational lead-in, but this is the part he’s good at. He licks inside of Merlin’s mouth, licks every bit of taste he can get at, and when Merlin moans, the sound lands in his gut, like a burning coal.

His arms travel around Merlin’s torso, wrapping around him, pressing into his back, bringing their bodies closer together, or as close as this position allows him. He lets his fingers explore downward, and then he’s tugging Merlin’s sweater up, dragging his shirt out of his waistband. He doesn’t mean for either of them to undress is any capacity, really, but he craves to touch him, to dig his fingers into his muscles.

“Wait,” Merlin murmurs, easing out of his touch, hands landing on Tequila’s shoulders. Tequila leans back compliantly to look at his face, but he lets his fingers roam further, getting a hold of Merlin’s belt, and it seems like an excellent idea to unbuckle it, so he starts on that. Merlin drops his hands and catches Tequila’s fingers. “Wait. _Agent Tequila._ ”

That finally makes him freeze, the awkwardness of his name hanging in the air. He leans back further onto his heels. “That didn’t sound very good,” he says, his mouth curling upward only slightly.

“That’s my point,” Merlin says, looking at him with serious intent eyes, which would be a little discouraging if he wasn’t also cradling Tequila’s hands in his. “You cannot expect me to call you a _beverage_ name while we’re doing this.” His voice is low and gravelly and travels across Tequila’s skin in a shiver.

The question implied in the statement makes him stiffen. This hasn’t mattered to people in—such a long time, maybe not ever. His last steady girlfriend happened during his rodeo stint, and she called him Ace just like everyone else there. And after that, with the Statesmen… If he ever got up to anything, it was either a job, which meant an alias, or it was a meaningless one-night-stand hook-up, where nicknames happened as part of the sex talk, things like _come on, sugar_ and _fuck me harder, cowboy_ , and, even more commonly, no names were exchanged at all.

He presses his forehead against Merlin’s shoulder and shuts his eyes. (Their hands are still intertwined, it’s like an anchor, holding him in this moment.)

“Jesse…” he murmurs, and another shiver runs through his whole body. He hasn’t said this name aloud to anyone in too fucking long, like unearthing a long-buried secret. “Jesse Reed. My name’s Jesse Reed.”

“How very cowboy,” Merlin says above him. His voice is warm.

“I should probably learn your name as well,” Tequila suggests, finding enough courage to look up at him.

Merlin smiles faintly. “Hamish Mycroft, pleased to meet you, Mr. Reed,” he says. “But I haven’t used that name in twenty-five years, so, please, Merlin will do.”

He rises to his feet and drags Tequila up with him.

“Over here,” he says, leading him to a wall. They’re still holding hands. Merlin presses his palm over an innocuous photograph of Scottish moors, and a hidden panel slides open, revealing a small closet-sized room with a bed in it.

“Tell me this ain’t where you live,” Tequila says, looking around. It’s completely spartan. There is nothing here but a thin bed and a small empty bedside table.

Merlin chuckles. “Certainly not. But I do work long hours, and it comes in handy to crash here sometimes, where I can be alerted to any updates to the projects I’m monitoring.”

He turns around and slides his arms around Tequila’s torso.

“So, you’re a bring-your-work-home-with-you kind of a guy, huh,” Tequila says, doing the same, letting his hands roam freely over his body.

“Mm. Couldn’t you tell?” Merlin says mildly, leaning forward, and then they’re kissing again, more insistent than before, and Merlin’s mouth feels so good, and it’s leading him places. It’s fierce and take-charge, exactly like he would have expected from Merlin, and it’s hungry, too, but the hunger is his own.

Merlin’s holding onto him, too, letting his weight settle on top of his chest—his limp was more pronounced as he led Tequila across the room, today must not be a good day for him, and all this standing around, he needs some way to take the weight off, so he’s using Tequila for support, and it feels so good, the solid pressure of his chest against his own. His hunger only deepens.

This time, he takes care to undress Merlin properly. He hasn’t planned on anything like this, but having been invited into his bedroom nook, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity. He pulls Merlin’s sweater off him and unspools his tie, wrestles the buttons of his shirt open, and lets his palms travel down his exposed chest. Merlin sucks in a breath at the sensation. His chest hair tickles Tequila’s palms. He unwraps his watch from his wrist and carefully sets it on the nightstand, and he lets Merlin’s hands pull his t-shirt off him so that they are both naked from the waist up, and when they kiss again, tongues sliding against each other languidly, it’s chest to chest, skin to skin, and Merlin whispers into his mouth, “God, you’re beautiful.”

Merlin’s glasses end up gingerly placed on the table as well, and then Tequila pushes him down onto the bed. It is a narrow thing, meant for one person only, so there’s no place for Tequila to go other than to climb over Merlin and straddle his hips. His hands finally finish their job and unfasten Merlin’s belt.

“Bet you’d like to be on top,” he murmurs, his voice going hoarse.

“I’d like a lot of things my leg won’t let me do,” Merlin says in a low voice, and Tequila swallows back a moan and hides it inside Merlin’s mouth by kissing him again. In his mind, like a white-hot pulse, he imagines all the things Merlin could be doing to him. Bending him over that pristine desk of his and fucking him there, a slow and unhurried pace. The image makes his cock, still unattended, throb with need. He shifts his hips, and his erection brushes against the bulge in Merlin’s pants. Merlin groans, making Tequila shudder bodily. His hands land on Tequila’s ass, pressing him closer, pushing up against him.

Tequila fumbles with their pants again. “Can I?” he rasps.

“Please,” Merlin says on an exhale, fingers clutching at him, clawing at his skin.

Tequila’s hands shake a little. He doesn’t bother undressing them fully. He wrestles Merlin’s belt out of its hoops, followed by his own, and unzips both of their pants, dragging them down a little, just enough wiggle room to get their dicks touching. He doesn’t hide his moan this time, lets it escape, guttural and desperate. His hands land on the bed, caging Merlin between his arms, and he just slides his cock alongside of Merlin’s, letting him take care of the jerking off part. Which he does, with as much skill as can be had here. Tequila’s cock is already leaking, and Merlin gets his hand, his deft brilliant hand, over his cock, over both of their cocks together, rubbing them together, and all Tequila can do is fuck into his hand, fuck against his cock, against the roughness of his fingers.

“Fuck,” he pants, and moans again, and leans down to kiss Merlin again, making him stutter in his rhythm, but it’s worth it, he needs his mouth to be on Merlin’s skin. “Fuck, Merlin,” he breathes over his mouth, his thrusts becoming erratic. “I’m so close.” He desperately needs to come.

“Yes,” is Merlin’s only response, and he doesn’t sound as unmade by this as Tequila feels, but he sounds eager for him. “Fuck. Jesse…”

Tequila nearly whimpers at the sound of his name, said with such sheer want, and all the knowledge underneath that want, the knowledge that Merlin has of him, of who he is, and he’s still here, wanting him, touching him, fucking him. He comes in a hard wave, the orgasm rocking through his entire body. A groan spills out of him as he spasms, and he feels Merlin’s rasping moan, and the heat of Merlin’s own come spurting all over his abdomen. Panting, he sags on top of him. Merlin’s hand snakes around his back, pressing him closer, letting him collapse on top of him.

They rest like that for a moment. Tequila’s heart is racing, almost painfully, and he wonders if Merlin can feel it, or if his heart is beating just as hard.

“An awfully small bed to entertain guests in,” he murmurs into Merlin’s shoulder. He feels Merlin’s every answering breath, and turns his head, looks at his face. His eyes are closed, he’s resting a hand over his forehead, his face is relaxed and looks strikingly vulnerable without the glower of his glasses.

“Yes, foolish of me, to be so unprepared for company,” he says.

Tequila smiles and has an urge to reach over and kiss him again. So he does, even though a voice in the back of his head is telling him he shouldn’t. It’s a brief sweet pleasure, trailing his tongue over his lips, over his teeth. Merlin hums into the kiss, and Tequila feels his mouth form into a smile. He’s drawing circles over Tequila’s back, and Tequila shivers.

“It’s nearly midnight,” Merlin murmurs without opening his eyes. “You should stay.”

Tequila swallows, and closes his eyes, because yes, he could do that, it’s not unheard of for one-night-stands, this lazy post-coital gentleness. But it has finally dawned on him, somewhere in the middle of it all—in the middle of looking at Merlin’s sharp angular face, completely open to him for the first time, and Merlin leaning onto him for support because of his leg, and Tequila clutching at him tightly, and all the things outside of this moment in time, things like Merlin’s dry quips, and low laughter, and everything else, every quirk, every facet—it dawns on him how much he’s actually gone for.

He was so scared of fucking up here, and he was right to be, he did fuck up. Wanting this is not what he’s supposed to be doing here; and he wants. Wants to stay. To kiss Merlin some more. To foster whatever this is between them. But it’s nothing. A passing attraction. It’s not Merlin’s fault that Tequila has never had sex with someone he actually knew beforehand so now he’s being smothered by a sudden avalanche of emotion. He has never not been a needy fucker.

“We should clean up,” he says out loud, and flexes his arms, makes himself roll off Merlin and into a seating position. His skin feels sticky all over, and he winces; the walk of shame to his room and to his shower is gonna feel unpleasant. He yanks his trousers back up and starts putting himself in order.

When he turns around, Merlin’s resting with one hand behind his head and looking at him, eyes dark and sharp. Admiring the view, and Tequila offers him a quiet smile. He wonders how much of him Merlin really sees. If he can somehow see the real him, his filthy ugly past; if he knows that Tequila really isn’t worth it. He picks up his shirt from the floor and puts it back on, all creased now.

“You should look into a double,” he says, keeping his voice light. He smiles, and the smile comes easy, what else he can do but smile at Merlin, with all the damned futile longing that’s aching in his chest.

“Too late for that,” Merlin answers, and Tequila swallows. Too late for a lot of things, that’s for damn sure.

Fuck, but he really should have known better than to trade one drug for another. He’s never been good at keeping himself in check.

* * *

“So, I’m bleeding out of my head injury, and out of my ear, _really_ wishing I was back at our med lab—and, by the way, the new doctor that Champ vetted and recruited for my post refuses to get along with me, even though I am _so_ nice to him. I’m nice to everybody!”

“I’m guessing, nice as you are, he’s not a fan of how you’re always trying to overrule him and doctor yourself, like the good old days,” Tequila quips.

He’s leaning back in Merlin’s chair, legs stretched over the other one that he usually occupies, and he’s tossing an orange up and down over his head. Agent Whiskey’s face is large on the monitor and she’s gushing to him about her latest bag and tag.

She frowns at him, a cute and genuinely perplexed frown, because that honestly hasn’t occurred to her. But he’s known her long enough to guess at the pitfalls of her personality, charming as he may find her.

“You were saying?” he prompts gently.

“Yes! So I tell her to put her gravitational manipulator down, and let us all come back down to earth. Show’s over. No one’s dying here tonight. And then Brandy says: ‘But this will probably hurt,’ and coldcocks her with one smooth hit, we were like clockwork, it was _amazing_.”

Tequila smiles, amused. It’s been over half a year, and Whiskey’s still completely exhilarated over being Whiskey, being out in the field. It shows in the messages she sends him, and it shows in their face-to-face calls.

“Look at you, saving the day.”

She preens but pretends she doesn’t. “Just an honest day’s work.”

“Give Brandy my regards,” he tips an invisible hat, and Elizabeth nods.

“What about you? Slain any villains lately?”

Tequila tosses the orange up and catches it. “You know this isn’t what I do here.”

“You miss it?”

He considers it and shrugs. “No. This is more fun than I would have thought.” He tosses the orange again, then squeezes it thoughtfully. “So. Theoretical question. Not having something to do with my problems, mind you.”

“Okay,” Whiskey smiles, amused at the preface.

“How do people quit something cold turkey?”

She sighs, her forehead creasing visibly. “Tequila…”

“ _Not_ about me, I told you,” he repeats. (A bald-faced lie.) “Honestly, I’m good. Haven’t had a drop to drink since I got here.”

“So, what, you’re asking for a friend?” she scoffs. He just makes a face at her. “I offered you the twelve steps before, Tequila. ‘Cold turkey,’ as you put it, isn’t a science. Withdrawal can be too severe, it’s much more prudent to gradually taper off.”

He chews on the inside of his cheek. “What if we’re talking, like, behavior?” he suggests lightly.

“Behavior?” she frowns, not understanding. She wouldn’t. She has probably never done anything even remotely brash in her life. But for him, this want, it’s out of control, and there has to be a way to stopper it. “You mean like thrill-seeking?” she asks.

“Sure,” he agrees easily. “Let’s go with that.” It is about that, too, after all, that he has never been able to say no to a little risk. He just had no idea what he was risking.

“But we’re still not talking about you,” she says shrewdly. He laughs instead of giving her a straight answer, and she narrows her eyes at him. “Right,” she drawls. “Completely tangential.” She takes off her glasses, lets him see her concerned eyes. “Look. As a professional, all I can say is that cognitive therapy is about identifying impulses and working on altering them. But, as your friend, you know you can talk to me, right?”

He smiles. “I promise you, I’m just peachy,” he lies. In other words: he’s completely screwed.

“I’m not going to interrogate you,” she presses, voice still laced with concern. “Just a talk.” When he’s silent, she sighs and relents. “I guess I could send you some info…” she starts saying, which he already knows will be of no help in his particular situation, when the door behind Tequila whooshes open, letting Merlin in.

Tequila tips his head back, welcoming him with a smile. Easily, he rises from Merlin’s chair and relocates to the one where he’s been resting his legs.

“Making yourself right at home here, I see,” Merlin says dryly as he slides into his seat. “Agent Whiskey,” he nods at the woman on his screen formally.

“Agent Merlin,” she nods back. Her eyes drift towards Tequila with concealed concern, but she doesn’t try and bring up the matter again, knowing the value of discretion.

“I hate to be cutting this short, but we have some matters to attend to,” Merlin says.

“Of course. Say no more. I will talk to both of you later,” she nods, and the feed goes blank.

Merlin starts typing something, bringing up various maps and photos on his screens. “You know, she still asks after you in our correspondence, every time,” he mentions casually. Glances over at Tequila gagingly. “I do still, as you say, ‘get up with her’.”

“I haven’t been keeping in touch as well as I should have been,” Tequila says. “I’m trying to rectify that. Y’all and your manners are rubbing off on me,” he grins and tosses his orange in the air again. “I really like it here,” he admits quietly.

He does. He’s managed to screw that up, the balance of him being here, but maybe not totally, maybe he can still salvage it. This place lets him breathe fully like he hasn’t done in a long while, not even in Kentucky. It feels like a clean slate. Still, it’s probably all kinds of shitty of him that the thing that finally pushed him into calling up Whiskey has been so completely selfish.

When he refocuses, Merlin is looking at him steadily, and Tequila once again gets that uncomfortable feeling that Merlin can see into his head. It’s just the intensity, the unwavering steadiness of his gaze. It must freak the trainees out, too, which is a silver lining, that he’s not the only one feeling on the spot.

“You wanted to show me something?” he says.

“I did,” Merlin says. He looks at his screens, at the information he’s brought up there, then looks back at Tequila. “Maybe it can wait,” he suggests softly.

Tequila straightens in his chair, feeling the mood shift instantaneously. He grips the armrests tightly, wanting to bolt.

“I wouldn’t want to come between you and your work,” he says lightly.

“How about just coming in general?” Merlin says, and knocks Tequila completely out of the park with that remark. The instant mental picture of it makes him shake, and a hotness lands in his gut. He blinks at Merlin and has to swallow several times.

_Don’t screw this up, don’t screw this up,_ he keeps reminding himself. _Cold turkey. Cold turkey. Show some restraint for fuck’s sake._

Merlin squints at him, evidently surprised that he’s hesitating, which is fair, since Tequila has been the one who was all over him last night.

“Jesse…” he says questioningly.

And it’s not even the fact of his name, it’s _how_ he says it, is what breaks him. The heart-rending uncertainty and care in his voice. Tequila propels himself out of the chair with the momentum he’s been gathering for fleeing, only instead he finds himself sprawled all over Merlin, holding onto him with shaking fingers, kissing him savagely.

So much for self-control.

It’s all a repeat of last night, only not. He drops to his knees, only this time when he tries unbuckling Merlin’s pants, Merlin doesn’t stop him, there wouldn’t be any stopping him, he nearly rips his pants down, and before Merlin can catch up with what his plan is he gets his mouth on that beautiful cock, already half-hard for him. He hasn’t stopped thinking about his cock since the night before.

He slows down when he gets to it, though. This isn’t a rush job, he’s not about to half-ass it. He gives Merlin and his cock his full attention. He wants him to enjoy every moment of this. He wants to enjoy it himself. He never has, before, it was purely utilitarian for him and not about bringing someone pleasure just for the hell of it. He sucks as much of his length in as he comfortably can and helps himself with his hand, stroking him up and down with the same rhythm as his mouth, getting his cock all slicked up. Merlin’s fingers slide through his short hair, not enough purchase there for a firm grip, so he just cups the base of Tequila’s skull, and Tequila lets him drive, lets him set the pace the way he would like it. Merlin’s breathing is the only loud sound in the room.

All of it is enough to get him hard as well, but that’s not happening tonight, that’s for damn sure. He’s already ruining the most perfect friendship of his life, he’s aware of that, just fucking it right up, but they both already went there, and they can’t ungo there.

“Jesse…” Merlin says again, more of a groan, really, his head tipped as far back as possible as he’s sprawled in the chair.

Tequila keeps sucking him off, quietly, intently, and Merlin just breathes, doesn’t say anything either. He’s laconic at the best of times, and he’s sure as hell not a talker where sex is concerned. Tequila loves that about him, but he’s pretty sure he would have loved it if the opposite was true, it isn’t about the trait, it’s about Merlin, and how deep Tequila is in this hole he has dug himself into.

“Careful,” Merlin warns him, his voice strained, and he tugs at Tequila’s hair a little, trying to ease him off, but Tequila hums around his cock and stays right with him, lets the flood of cum fill his mouth. He’s never done that part before, not for anyone. He swallows. “Fuck,” Merlin whispers, his voice nearly broken, and Tequila carefully tucks him back into his pants.

He lets his palms slide across Merlin’s thighs as he gets up, and Merlin catches him by the hand and tries drawing him closer. He looks destroyed. It’s a beautiful sight. “Come here,” he says, and he means to kiss him again, his cum-stained tongue, or maybe to reciprocate. Tequila squeezes his fingers and carefully takes his hand back, stepping away.

“You had work to do, remember? You should get back to it.” His voice sounds rough and he clears his throat, avoiding Merlin’s eyes, which stopped being bleary and focus on him with great intensity.

“Jesse…” he says again, and again it nearly makes him collapse. He wants to kiss Merlin’s lips. He wants to kiss his throat, his stomach, his fingers. He wants to never stop kissing him.

“I have to go,” he says instead. His fingers are itching with the desire to reach out and touch Merlin again. He exercises the last of his willpower to stop himself from doing it. It’s only three steps until he’s out the door. Merlin doesn’t try to stop him.

* * *

“What I want,” Harry says when they next confer, “before we start talking about officially inducting them—is for them to learn the subtle art of negotiation.”

“That’s an excellent point, sir,” Roxy nods. “It’s another important form of battle.”

“No. It’s not,” Harry corrects her kindly. “The trick to it—and it has taken me years to come at this realization—that we’ve all been taught to work against whoever it is we’re negotiating with. We are all ready for the shootout to happen, and we’ve made them ready for the same, they’re matchless in their combat skill. But what I want to impart to them is the finesse and the capacity to approach it as a collaboration. Acting in good faith is a long-neglected talent, and yet deescalation is one of the more potent tricks in our repertoire.”

“Can’t really collaborate with someone like, say, Richard Valentine, Harry,” Eggsy points out. He’s not disagreeing, per se, but the point is fair.

“Not everyone’s going to be a Valentine. Sometimes all the other side needs is your listening to what they have to say. Sometimes, the only adversary is the situation itself.”

Tequila swallows. That statement is true on so many levels and he can’t help but feel that it applies to him as well, to what he’s gone and done. Only he’s the one who created the situation in the first place, he’s the one with the unreasonable (unvoiced) demands. He ought to be negotiating with himself.

Harry goes on. Lays out a lesson plan that ought to take up another couple of weeks, at a bare minimum, but he’s not inclined to do anything by half.

Roxy supplements it with the next stage of their physical training, which includes canyoning and motorcycle racing. Merlin and her discuss the safety precautions.

“Thank you, agents,” Harry nods at all of them. “Dismissed.”

“Arthur,” Merlin nods formally at his friend.

Tequila smiles, amused, because in a tight-knit group like theirs, the protocol is only a flimsy formality, and yet they insist on holding to it.

He watches Harry retreat into the privacy of his office. Eggsy and Roxy exit together through a different door and they look to be colluding over something, which ought to make the recruits really nervous because they’re devious when paired together.

He startles when Merlin’s hand touches his shoulder. “I need to show you something,” he says.

Tequila feels his skin prickle and he dips his shoulder low, getting out from under Merlin’s touch. He scrambles to his feet, putting the chair between them, and he might as well have sprung away from Merlin in how obvious he is about the whole thing.

Merlin’s expression shutters and he studies him through the hard glint of his glasses. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Tequila says, and takes another step back. “What did you want to show me?”

Merlin takes a step toward him, and Tequila backs up again, making Merlin stop and frown. “Jesse…” he says, confused, and Tequila squeezes his eyes shut, like a mental shield against the power that his own name in Merlin’s mouth has over him.

“Stop,” he says, and opens his eyes, looks at Merlin steadily. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this.”

He doesn’t know how to keep it casual without fucking it up any further. It’s only fair that Merlin hears it.

Merlin’s jaw tenses and he looks him in the eyes, weighing something. Tequila’s prepared for him to debate the point, but all he says is, “Noted.”

He brushes past Tequila on the way out. Tequila closes his eyes and lets out a breath that is equal parts hurt and relief. There. He said it. He put up boundaries. It’ll work out for the best, in the long run. His chest feels hollowed out.

Whatever business Merlin’s meant to bring up with him is left unattended, but Tequila lets him leave with it. It will be a while before they can act like everything’s normal. He only hopes he can steer them back to where they started, where they were friends, and nothing polluted the fact that they were friends. That he hasn’t just set fire to the best thing in his life.

* * *

It’s Wednesday when they save the world.

“This presence has been probing our firewalls for about a month now,” Merlin reports to the team, fanning out the data over multiple screens. “The issue was a minor nuisance at first, but shifted to mildly concerning about two weeks back.”

Tequila shifts in his chair uncomfortably. He has to wonder if that was the thing that Merlin tried to bring up with him those two times that things devolved into… something else.

“Why haven’t you said anything before?” Harry frowns, his eyes scanning the monitors. The traces of the hacking attempts. Merlin’s efforts to trace the path back to its origin source.

“If I brought up every mild concern with you, you’d be swamped,” Merlin says smoothly.

“Well, it isn’t mild anymore, is it?” Harry says. It isn’t harsh. He’s just troubled.

Eggsy hasn’t reported in for over twenty-four hours.

“You think these two things are related?” Roxy asks. She’s trying to keep her face and tone professional, but her worry is tangible.

“I’m about 62% certain that they are,” Merlin says. His voice is grave.

“Odd number to pick,” Tequila says quietly.

Merlin’s answering silence is withering.

“You have a location in mind? Something we could trace? Some- _one_?” Harry presses.

“I don’t have a person, but I do have a place. It is almost certainly a trap,” Merlin says flatly.

“We’ve worked with worse,” Harry says. “We rather make a habit of walking into villains’ lairs.”

“They don’t usually expect us,” Merlin counters.

“Either way. It’s not like we have a multitude of options here, and the longer we tarry, the more danger Galahad could be in. Suit up, all of you. I’ll expect you at the jet in fifteen.”

“All of us?” Merlin frowns. “Don’t you think it’s rash, leaving the home base and the recruits unattended? It might be exactly what the intruder wants.”

“I’m not sitting this one out,” Roxy interjects immediately, her face growing hot. She’s still miffed about being left behind on the Poppy Adams job.

“I was gonna suggest Agent Tequila,” Merlin says.

Tequila looks up at him, but Merlin’s very pointedly looking only at Harry. It’s not an unreasonable suggestion: Tequila knows the control room and he’s the authority figure with the recruits, so he could ostensibly be left in charge.

Harry glances over him cursorily. “He goes,” he says. “You may need more than one active field agent.” He hesitates momentarily. “I’ll stay,” he adds, his voice just the tiniest bit pinched. “You’re right, we cannot leave our rear completely defenseless. I’ll be on the comms at all times.” His jaw moves, and Tequila can’t imagine how hard it is for him to make this decision. “Now hurry along.”

Which is how Tequila ends up on a plane with Merlin and Roxy, heading for destinations unknown.

“Do you think we’ll find him there?” Roxy asks quietly.

“I hope so,” Merlin mutters. “That would make it easy, wouldn’t it?”

But it isn’t easy. The whole thing’s a trap, predictably. Knowing you’re walking into one isn’t much of an advantage, they quickly discover.

Tequila remembers, ages ago, sitting in Merlin’s ops center, full to the brim with doubt and maybe self-pity, and Merlin dissecting his own personal failings to him, laying them bare. _I fucked your country_ , he said. Who would have thought that would come to bite them in the ass?

The person behind the hacks—if you could call them that, because, really, it’s not a hack if it doesn’t succeed, and grazing lightly over their secure firewalls barely constitutes a problem—the person is—well, a kid, really. Tequila would put him maybe at seventeen.

Eggsy’s unconscious, so they don’t know how the boy got to him in the end. If he hired someone. If he did it himself, sold him some kind of a sob story before stabbing him in the back, metaphorically or literally.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says, eyes trained on Merlin.

His pitch is this: his father, God rest his soul, made a deal with Valentine two years ago. Got an implant in his neck, the whole shebang. His wife got the same laser treatment, but the kid? The dad managed to plead for him to be left out of it. A show of good faith, and he’s a minor anyway, a developing organism, all that jazz. And Valentine agreed. He already had his finger on the button that would control the parents, so why wouldn’t he? On V-Day, they left for a secure bunker. Nobody there but the family and whatever you bring into a fallout shelter when you’re a billionaire. Provisions. Tech. A couple of security guards. So imagine being fifteen, and halfway talented at figuring shit out, and you watch your parents’ heads explode like watermelons, blood and bits of bone and brain matter spattering the walls. And you have to sit there, and scream yourself hoarse, and vomit, and claw yourself in grief, and the security guards, shell-shocked as they are, are not letting you leave, because the protocol said to wait until a certain time before the danger would pass. And then you find out it was all for nothing.

So yes, the villain has an origin story. And he has blown nearly all of his parents’ funds and resources on finding out who was responsible for their deaths. In some version of the universe, he’s even justified. He doesn’t want the world to end. He just wants to kill two people.

(“What am I, chopped liver?” Roxy hisses angrily. “I went into the fucking stratosphere for that shit. I fell from the sky! I faced my fears. But who does he pick for his vendetta? Oh, the two _guys_ , of _course_.”

“Are you mad that someone is _not_ trying to kill you?” Tequila whispers.

Roxy glares at him and shakes her head in frustration, and that’s about all the clever banter they can squeeze in there while ducking for cover.)

In the end, the details matter little. It’s almost really bad. When it’s Kingsmen, Statesmen, it’s always almost really bad.

What it comes down to is: the little turd traps Merlin in a makeshift glass prison while he’s trying to do his techno magic. Four impenetrable walls suddenly springing up around him. Merlin barely even stumbles in whatever wizardry he’s doing with the computer systems while Tequila’s trying to find an off switch or some other way to break him out. Roxy’s all the way on the other end of the compound, springing Eggsy, and the little punk is getting away to spoil their lives another day, but not before he triggers his last fuck-you switch. And the glass cube around Merlin starts filling with gas.

Tequila is supposed to be watching Merlin’s back—they’ve even postponed whatever frostiness there is between them, exchanging brief remarks, all to the point. They get separated out of nowhere, Tequila watching the glass suddenly rise up as he was hanging back maybe a few steps, just for a moment. And then, before he can figure out how to break the damn thing, he watches the smoke start fogging the inside of it. It has a cartoonishly green hue. Merlin looks around himself, and he’s not even panicked—he quickly pulls off his vest and presses the cloth to his mouth, trying to counter the gas’s effects, while his free hand still continues typing in commands. It takes maybe six seconds before he faints.

It takes maybe another ten for Tequila to find something heavy enough to smash through the glass, because of course it would be all kinds of resistant. He drags Merlin out of the cloud of whatever the shit that was, eyes instantly watering from contact, and he ends up in a coughing fit. His fingers shake as he checks for a pulse—it’s faint and uneven, but it’s there. Merlin’s breaths come out rare and shallow and Tequila leans over him and presses his mouth to his, blowing what he hopes is clean air into his lungs, forcing Merlin to circulate this poison out of his system, just a little. He has no idea if it’s made it into his blood stream or something. How touch-and-go this really is. The alpha-gel is pressed into the inline of his hat, and it’s fucking useless for this.

“Come on, come on, darlin’,” Tequila whispers, patting Merlin’s face. It feels awfully cold to the touch. He’s half-seated on the floor, cradling Merlin on his lap, when Roxy comes in over the comms. She’s got Eggsy. He’s fine. The kid’s dead, he left her no choice. The facility’s rigged to explode. Is he okay to travel?

“Copy that, on my way,” Tequila says hoarsely, as he scrambles to his feet and lobs Merlin over his shoulder, setting into a sprint, tracing their steps back.

The explosion is ugly. They watch it from the windows of their rising jet, sullen. Merlin’s lying on the couch, still unconscious and looking like death.

It’s a Wednesday, and they just saved the world. No, not the world—themselves. A kid is dead: that’ll weigh on Roxy’s conscience. Merlin’s nearly dead. Nothing about this feels like a victory.

* * *

“You’re sure you know how to operate this?” Harry asks him later that evening.

They’re in the ops center. It feels uncomfortably empty without Merlin there.

Tequila nods. “I’m sure,” he says. Then adds, “They nearly made me the next Ginger Ale, you know. Back in Kentucky.”

“I see,” Harry says. Unlike Merlin, he doesn’t offer any insightful conversation in response. Nor should he. Merlin said things to Tequila because he cared enough to—a fact Tequila’s beginning to appreciate only now.

“I need you to run a full sweep of our system. See if that boy left any Trojan gifts, or what have you.”

Tequila nods and obediently sits down, even though he’s itching to not be here, to be in the medical wing instead—for all the good that would do. He’s staring blankly at the screens when he asks, “Do they know when he’ll wake up?”

Harry shuffles his feet. “The doctor tells me, whatever substance he has been exposed to was a highly concentrated toxin,” he says, his tone impossibly clinical. “It’s nearly too much for one body to handle, and, well—age is a factor as well, I’m sure that comes as no surprise.”

“Of course,” Tequila murmurs. He types in a few commands into the system, just for show.

“You did everything you could,” Harry suggests after a pause. He presses a hand into Tequila’s shoulder.

Tequila snorts. Like that’s his worry at all.

“You didn’t really answer my question,” he says instead.

“They’ll know after the next twenty-four hours.”

Tequila nods. “I better get to work,” he mutters. He hears the clicks of Harry’s shoes as he’s walking away when it occurs to him that in his effort to save face and appear less involved, he’s just acting like a shit friend instead. He swivels around in his chair and says, “Hey.” Harry stops and looks at him quizzically. “I hope he pulls through,” he says, and means it more than Harry can possibly understand, but he doesn’t have to. All he has to know is that his friend of thirty years is in a hospital bed, and someone is wishing him well.

“Thank you,” he nods curtly. “I’m going to be in the medical wing if you need me.”

Tequila nods and watches Harry leave. Watches him go to the place where he yearns to go, but he can’t. It’s not even that he has a task—he has no explanation for wanting to be there. He’s not family, not in the sense Harry is to Merlin. He’s just—no one.

He turns back to the screens and rubs at his eyes before opening up Merlin’s security measures and burying himself in the slow and monotonous sifting through every element of their system, letting his eyes do the work and his brain drift.

* * *

It goes on for far longer than the next twenty-four hours. Every hour past that is an excruciating infinity.

Tequila makes it to the medical wing once, because he inhaled that shitty toxin too and he needed a check-up. But everything proves to be normal with him. A few intakes of breath meant nothing. So he gets a clean bill of health, and Merlin’s still lying there, behind the curtain—Tequila doesn’t even manage to see him properly when he’s there. He leaves, wanting nothing more than to trade places with him.

He finishes the sweep of the system once, and finds nothing, and doubts his results, so he does it again, but still finds nothing wrong. He checks with Agent Whiskey, and with Ginger Ale who sends him a few new programs to try out, just to make sure. They all come back clean. They’re safe.

After that, Tequila’s job is just to monitor the usual beacons they have all over the UK, collecting intel. The training is temporarily suspended—a quiet respite for the recruits before their graduation, while their mentors are worrying over something else.

Which leaves Tequila with a lot of free time on his hands, and he pretends he can busy himself with something menial for about half a day of riding horseback before saying fuck it, and then he goes to the medical wing again, and sort of just stays there.

He alternates between the ops center and his new job substituting for Merlin, and actually sitting by Merlin’s bed, letting his mind wander, working out the kinks of the graduation plan, doing some light reading.

Harry’s surprised to see him there when he comes to visit next.

“Didn’t expect to find you here,” he says, only the subtlest hint of curiosity in his voice.

Tequila shrugs. “He’s my closest friend here,” he offers, just to say something, some kind of an excuse. Harry hums. If he believes in Tequila’s lie or not, he can’t tell. He pulls up a chair, and they sit together for hours, conducting their conjoint vigil. Harry probably finds it a bit strange, but at least he can write it off as Tequila’s incongruity, and not anything to do with his friend and his private affairs. If Merlin were to wake up and discover that Tequila somehow let it slip about their indiscretion, he would probably kill him. Thumbing the pages of his book, Tequila finds the thought oddly comforting.

* * *

He’s not there when Merlin first wakes up. Harry is. That’s probably for the best, that is how it should be. Tequila imagines Harry saying something gruff but well-meaning to Merlin, their quiet camaraderie, and pretends it isn’t twisting a knife in his gut not to be there by his side.

Harry visits him afterwards, as a courtesy. Whatever conclusions he has drawn, if any, he at least hasn’t missed the fact that Tequila has been spending most of his free time at Merlin’s bedside—something that warrants being notified that he woke up.

When Harry tells him, Tequila jumps to his feet so fast he nearly overturns his chair, and Harry lifts his palm. “He’s already dozed off,” he warns him. “It’s slow-going, this process. He will be sleeping a lot, the doctor says.”

“Okay,” Tequila says stupidly, and feels incredibly foolish for his outburst. He hides his eyes and rights the chair, waiting for Harry to leave, before slumping back into it and burying his face in his hands, his chest flooding with so much relief he nearly sobs. Okay, he’s okay, he’s okay.

Merlin drifts in and out for the rest of the day, awake for only brief periods of time. The medical wing suddenly becomes crowded, as Harry, Eggsy and Roxy all convene there, coaxing Merlin through these first steps in recovery. Tequila’s keeping his respectful distance. It’s not his place to be there with them.

It’s late into the night when he finally creeps into the room to resume his watch. The room is still moderately lit, for the doctors’ convenience, so it’s hard to tell that it’s long past midnight. Tequila takes advantage of it to get further into his book—although he’s only beginning to pay close attention to it now that he knows that the danger to Merlin has passed and the weight has lifted from his shoulders, so he’s only half-understanding what the author is alluding to at times, and he’ll probably have to cave and go back and reread it from the beginning. It’s a volume on British aristocracy.

“I’m getting a bad case of déjà vu,” Merlin mumbles next to me. It comes out barely coherent through his numb, dry lips.

Tequila startles, and the book flops out of his hands onto the floor with a loud thud. Merlin winces and cracks open an eye, studying Tequila.

“I distinctly remember another hospital room, and another injury, and you constantly zipping in and out for your own check-ups,” Merlin continues the thought. “Hope I haven’t shattered another leg.”

Tequila’s mouth quivers humorously. “Your leg’s fine. The rest of you, not so much.” He hesitates for a moment before tentatively adding, “I’m fine, too. No check-ups for me.”

Merlin hums, closing his eyes again. It’s a long pause before he says, “Why are you here then, Agent Tequila?”

“I thought you might like some company,” Tequila murmurs softly.

He watches Merlin swallow and purse his lips together, forming a reply. He’s waiting on the verdict with bated breath.

“I don’t mind it,” Merlin finally says, opening his eyes again. They look at each other. Tequila allows himself a cautious smile. Merlin doesn’t smile back, he just sighs. His hand atop the covers moves, fingers searching, and Tequila doesn’t let himself think about it, he just presses his hand into his. Merlin squeezes his fingers, and his eyes drift shut again. His breathing slows. Tequila stays as he is for a good long while, his fingers laced with Merlin’s.

* * *

“Run that by me again,” Tequila laughs.

Merlin gives him an unimpressed glance over his glasses and calls up the photos of all their trainees on his screens. “Percival,” he says, going from one face to another, “Gawain. Bedivere. Tristan. Agravain. Bors. Kay. Sagramore.”

Tequila snorts down another laugh. “You know. I’ve heard of some of them, alright? But you have really been scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to name all of ‘em, haven’t you?”

“It’s classic literature,” Merlin responds primly. “You’re just a heathen.”

Tequila smiles at him fondly. It’s been a week and a half since Merlin first woke up, and he proceeded to have a speedy recovery, eager to return to his domain. The doctors are still hovering, and he hasn’t been given a clean bill of health yet, but they’re nearly there.

Tequila has been allowed back into his good graces in the meantime. Back to spending idle time in the ops center, easy conversations and easier silences, and it’s almost like nothing ever happened. All his mistakes erased. He doesn’t question it, and stifles that part of himself that’s not content.

“I think you should replace ‘Kay’ with something else,” he says. “‘Cause whoever gets that isn’t gonna be happy they got the short end of the stick. Literally.” Merlin opens his mouth and Tequila waves him off. “And don’t give me that ‘it’s an honored name’ crap. It’s a single letter is what it is. You can do better.” He looks at the pictures of the recruits, soon to be full-fledged agents. “You know, it’s a little weird you giving boy names to these girls.”

“Because Whiskey is the height of femininity?” Merlin raises an eyebrow at him.

“Hey, alcohol don’t have a gender. A bunch of dead knights do.”

He’s leaning against the table, half-seated over it, and gripping the edge with both hands. And when Merlin leans back in his chair, lets his fingers slide off the keyboard, one of his hands draws back and nudges against Tequila’s hand. They both jolt at the touch and stare down at the place of collision.

In the silence that follows, ever so carefully, Merlin moves his hand again, moves it to cover Tequila’s palm. His fingers brush softly over Tequila’s knuckles. He tries to hook Tequila’s fingers with his, and Tequila lets him, and for a second Merlin’s just holding his hand in his, and it’s more intimate than anything else they’ve done.

It’s too much. Too much.

Tequila pulls his hand back and cradles it against his chest. “I can’t…” he whispers. His voice comes out hoarse for some odd reason. His throat is completely closed up. “Merlin,” he tries again. “I can’t.”

Merlin’s expression falls. He scrunches up his face and knocks his glasses out of the way to rub at his eyes in frustration. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “What is your problem, Agent Tequila?” he asks, looking up at him. At least his name has disappeared from Merlin’s casual vocabulary.

“I’m sorry,” Tequila says, willing him to understand. Things have been good these past few days, and now he feels their equilibrium wobble again and he’s scrambling for it to remain. He thinks, after everything that has happened, maybe Merlin will listen, and get it, let him off the hook, if he were to try and explain this a little better. “You gotta understand. I know I act all easy but—I ain’t. I don’t know how to do this, I told you. I start to… want things. And I’m sorry that I led you on, but I can’t be in this thing unless I’m really in it.” He waves his hand between them, hoping Merlin will understand.

Merlin squints at him and doesn’t look very understanding. “And why can’t you be really in it?” he asks sharply. “It occurs to me that I would really like to know the reason.”

Tequila just stares at him. “Well. _Because_ ,” he says, and ain’t it obvious? “That ain’t what this was ever about, is it.” Merlin’s eyes keep boring into him, and Tequila lets out a frustrated sigh. “You told me once you ain’t a masochist. Well, I ain’t either. I want—” his throat clenches up again, even tighter this time, and isn’t that a perfect moment to get all maudlin. He presses his lips together and rearranges the sentence in his head to sound less miserable. “I ain’t gonna go putting myself through this if you don’t want—if we don’t want the same thing.”

He closes his mouth and breathes around the hollowness he feels in his chest. It feels like a pain spreading. When he looks up—a lifetime later—Merlin is still looking at him, but his expression has shifted, has gone perfectly blank.

“You’re actually a fucking idiot,” he says sounding, out of all things, surprised. He closes his eyes and shakes his head, then looks at him again. “Can I ask you a question?”

Tequila shrugs. Might as well. His armor is completely depleted at this point.

“When have I ever indicated to you that I wasn’t in it for the long haul?”

Tequila stares at him, and feels a wave of muted disbelief wash through his insides. “Merlin,” he says, and twists his lips into a mirthless likeness of a smile. “I think you need to go get checked out by them doctors again. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s just you.”

Tequila grimaces. “Look,” he says. “We’ve had an amazing time, we did, but. I know what that means. It doesn’t have to—It doesn’t mean—”

“Of course it means,” Merlin interrupts him.

Tequila feels his chest pounding painfully. He shakes his head. “Well, it shouldn’t,” he says obstinately. He doesn’t know why this is making him so afraid. “It shouldn’t,” he says again. “You don’t—you don’t know half the shit I’ve done. I’m no good at this.”

Merlin closes his eyes shut and looks momentarily stricken, and Tequila watches him helplessly. When he opens his eyes, he just says it again, “You’re a fucking idiot.” He rises to his feet and stands right in front of him, wobbling slightly on his unsteady leg. Tequila finds himself shrinking back a little. “It was never a one-off deal for me, you absolute prick. And you can stop trying to convince me it should have been. If you want to confess your sordid past to me, you can go right ahead, I’m all ears. I want to know these things. I want to know every little thing about you. But _who_ you are? I already know that.”

“A fucking idiot?” Tequila asks into the pause that follows, because it’s his turn to say something, and he finds nothing else to say. Merlin chuckles.

Merlin rarely strings together many sentences at once. He’s a succinct man, and when he isn’t, it’s always completely staggering. Tequila’s not sure what to make of what he’s saying. It just doesn’t make any sense, it’s not how his life works. It’s not how _his_ life works.

“No accounting for taste,” Merlin murmurs.

He’s standing way too close to him now, and somehow Tequila has let him. Merlin sighs and Tequila feels it against his face, that’s how close they’re actually standing. But he’s not doing anything else, he’s letting Tequila resettle into this new status quo and make a new decision. He’s made it pretty clear, after all, that he’s already made his.

“So, long haul then, huh?” he says quietly.

“Only if you let it be.”

“It appears I have… misread the situation.”

Merlin lets out a whuff of laughter. “Evidently.”

Tequila sighs. “This is so far out of my depth,” he whispers.

“I’m beginning to realize that,” Merlin murmurs. His hands have found their way onto Tequila’s waist. “I was of a mind to be offended—that you would think I’m someone who sabotages a friendship for a one-night-stand. But I’m discovering you have a truly piss-poor self-awareness, so I’m letting it slide.”

Tequila chuckles feebly and uses it to mask how it also makes him shiver. “I don’t know how to do this,” he says again, very softly. “I don’t know how any of this works.”

But he leans in, and brushes his face against Merlin’s, presses their foreheads together. Their noses are nuzzling against each other.

“I don’t mind it,” Merlin says, and Tequila smiles, because somehow, somehow, it has come to mean something else entirely in their own private vocabulary. It has come to mean much deeper, much more tender things.

“Have you thought any more about putting up a double into that cupboard of yours?” he whispers against his mouth. They are this close to kissing, but they aren’t yet.

“Mm, no,” Merlin’s lips graze against his. “Counter-point: we both have perfectly viable rooms that demand exploring.”

Tequila laughs, and then he closes that last millimeter between them, and finally lets himself kiss Merlin, slow and thorough, fingers digging into his back so that they’re pressed up against each other.

“You sure we can manage getting there? They’re awfully far away,” he murmurs against his mouth.

“Well, Agent Tequila. We are the brightest minds in the Kingsmen service. I’m sure we can undertake this mission.”

Tequila throws his head back and laughs, and Merlin leans forward and catches the sound falling from his lips.

* * *

Kentucky air is different from England’s countryside. Clean air and green pastures may sound the same, but “Camelot” is right by the shoreline, only a few kilometers away from pale, chalky, eroding cliffs. Makes their property look downright gothic. Made for some interesting maritime inclusions into their defenses and technical mainframe as well, being this close to the sea.

Kentucky is different. Where Norfolk is cool and rainy, Kentucky’s hot and humid. No cliffs either, it’s all flat fields and plateaus. An occasional swamp here and there. A different climate altogether, with different flora, and different agriculture, and all of it smells different, and he has missed it so. So much.

Countryside gives way to the familiar sight and smell of the Statesman office and distillery. It’s a funny feeling, seeing it again. He’s never had a place to call home, before the Statesmen, and he thought he would never love another place like that again. Now, he has England, too. He doesn’t love Kentucky any less—in fact, it’s not that he loves England much at all, he just loves a person—but it feels like having two homes now, which, with his drifter upbringing, is an unimaginable luxury. It’s the strangest bit of travel, leaving home, but still coming home.

He presses his wristwatch to the scanner at the door and, for one treacherous second, he’s afraid of an _Access denied_. It wouldn’t be the end of the world—entry codes change, it’s only prudent, and his may have not been kept up to date. But the screen flashes an approving green, and the doors slide open. They haven’t forgotten about him. They’ve been expecting him.

He marches straight to the elevator and punches the button for the top floor, eager to see Champ. It’s a familiar smooth whoosh, he barely feels the movement as it takes him straight to the bottleneck of their building. The doors open, and he steps out and drops his travel bag onto the floor, looking around himself hungrily, taking the sight of the room in. The place has not changed, and it floods him with a warm wave of nostalgia, to be standing here again.

Champ gets up from his desk, grinning widely. “Tequila!” he exclaims, throwing his arms wide open. “Welcome back, son.” Tequila smiles, a little embarrassed, and steps into his arms, letting himself be folded into a powerful bear hug. For a man of his age, Champ is still surprisingly strong.

He grips Tequila’s shoulders and takes a step back. “Let me look at you,” he says, giving him a once-over. “You haven’t changed a bit!”

Tequila dressed down to his comfortable denim for the occasion, so he supposes he must look the same, even though he has changed in more ways than he can name.

“Agent Whiskey is monitoring an asset out in the field right now, it couldn’t be helped, but she’ll be joining us soon enough.” Champ settles back down into his chair and pops open one of the bottles adorning his table, one of the oldest bourbons in the room.

Tequila appreciates the welcoming gesture but he has to lift his palm up. “I’m, uh, sober now, actually.”

“Is that right?” Champ looks at him curiously and stoppers the bottle again. He refrains from pouring himself a drink in solidarity.

“Yessir,” Tequila smiles. “Keeping clean.”

“Well,” Champ chuckles. “I guess, one thing’s changed, then.” He leans back in his chair and studies Tequila. “Well, tell me everything, son.”

Tequila’s not much of a storyteller, so he hesitates. “Not much to tell, really. You’ve read all my reports. The Kingsmen are back on their feet, at full strength. Their final selection of recruits just graduated last week. We’re all very proud.”

Champ gives him his avuncular smile. “I was hoping for a more informal version. The between the lines kind of stuff.”

Tequila considers it. Wonders for a moment if this is the time to bring it up and decides against it. He just shrugs. “I loved it there. It was great. They’re all great people. Good friends.”

Champ studies him some more, then tips his head. “All right,” he accepts the unembellished summary and doesn’t try to milk Tequila for details. He knows he’s never been much of a sharer, and this is as much of a glowing review as he’s ever gonna give. “Well, listen. I didn’t know if you’d want to rest your feet for a while here, get yourself reacclimatized, but if you’d rather go back to work, you can have your pick of assignments.”

Ah. So, maybe it is the time to bring it up, after all.

“Sir,” he says, but Champ just rides over him in his enthusiasm.

“I’ve had a few selected specially that I think you will find quite interesting.” He keeps grinning, and Tequila winces uncomfortably.

“Champ,” he tries again, but the man keeps talking, and he says louder, “ _Champ,_ ” which finally gets him to stop.

“Something wrong?”

“I, uh, I think there might be a slight misunderstanding here, sir,” Tequila says. He looks around the room, at the rows of amber bottles stacked around the walls. “I’ve missed this place. I’ve missed you all. But I’m not, strictly speaking, back.”

Champ looks puzzled. “How do you mean?”

Tequila looks steadily at him. “I’ll be staying for a few weeks. Maybe a month. But I’m going back to England.”

Champ frowns. “I’m sure all the necessary liaising between our two organizations can happen via electronics. Our Ginger Ale and theirs can keep up the necessary synergy. If they’d rather have an agent, I can have one of our junior ones go in your place.”

Tequila looks down. “I _want_ to go back, sir,” he says pointedly.

Champ just chuckles. “Tequila, you _love_ Kentucky. I have never met another soul who’d love it here more, and over there less. I sent you with them because you’re one of my best men and I trust your instincts, and because you’ve met them so there were fewer growing pains. But you don’t need to stay there.”

Tequila worries his lip for a second, then bites the bullet. “I, um, sort of, met someone there, sir,” he mumbles.

Champ simply laughs again, even louder this time. “Well, why didn’t you say so!” he exclaims, unconcerned. “That’s not a reason. Bring her over here, problem solved.”

Tequila winces slightly. “I’ve met someone in the _Kingsmen_ ,” he elaborates.

Champ shrugs. “Even better. They’ve had the pleasure of having one of ours in their ranks. Now we can host one of theirs. She’s one of their new recruits, I assume? Hardly essential.”

Tequila squeezes his eyes shut against the entire trajectory of this whole conversation. “ _He’s_ not,” he says, in a clipped voice. “And, unlike me, he’s pretty indispensable over there. So. It has to be me.” He opens his eyes and looks at Champ.

Champ stills in his bustling exuberance and watches Tequila with a soft parental smile. The warmth of that smile spreads through Tequila’s chest, and he allows himself a smile in return.

“And is that okay?” Champ asks carefully. “You love it here, Tequila,” he says again, but making a different point now.

Tequila weighs and discards several answers he could give to that. “It’s okay,” he confirms in the end.

Champ’s mouth widens into a smile. “I’m happy for you, son,” he says.

Tequila looks down again, because he knows it’s just a word you get to use when you get to be Champ’s age, and everyone around you seems young and stupid, but it’s also not just a word, not between them. Tequila’s memories of his own father are warm but faded, frayed, and Champ is the closest thing he has to a parental figure, he’s the one person he wants to impress, and it _matters_ , it matters so fucking much that he approves, even sight unseen.

“It’s, uh. It’s their Ginger Ale,” he elaborates, embarrassed.

“What about him?” Champ frowns, momentarily confused, and Tequila cocks his eyebrow and makes a face at him until Champ catches up. “ _Ohhh._ Oh. I mean, really?” Tequila furrows his brow. “He just… doesn’t seem like your type.”

Tequila snorts. “If you’re basing it on my indiscriminate bar encounters, those women weren’t my type, I was theirs. He’s… He _is_.” He doesn’t feel like elaborating.

Champ smiles at him, and then abruptly stands up, and opens his arms up again. “Come here,” he says, and Tequila rises to his feet and steps into his arms, and it’s a different sort of hug altogether. Not a perfunctory, if warm, _welcome home_ , but as familial as it can get between a father figure and a prodigal son. “I’m so happy for you,” he says again.

“Mm-hm,” Tequila hums into his shoulder.

The thing is, he’s still thinking of going back home. Of seeing his mother again. Of looking in on Amelia as a fraternal protector. He won’t go alone when he does, he’ll have Merlin backing him up for that. And they’re his relatives, tied by blood, he has an instinctual desire to care for them. But this. Here. This is his actual family. Champ is his family.

Tequila lets himself stay in his embrace for a good long while.

* * *

He calls home at around five, when it would be late evening in England. He wants to catch Merlin just at the cusp of the day, when every other concern is put to rest. To be the last thing he hears before going to sleep.

He doesn’t actually call as much as he uses the comms to call the ops center, because he knows Merlin’s still working, even at ten, even at midnight.

Merlin picks up almost immediately. “Agent Tequila,” he says, in his professional voice.

“Figured you’d be on comms,” Tequila says warmly.

“And yet my personal phone is lying right here, on my desk.” He sounds just the slightest bit admonishing, but that’s just his general tone of voice, and Tequila feels only charmed.

“You want me to hang up and call it?” he asks, amused.

“That would just be redundant,” Merlin says. “How did it go?”

Tequila stretches out in his chair. “It went fine,” he says. “I missed this place. Whenever we do train someone to hold the fort down in your stead, you’re coming out here with me. I want you to really see Kentucky.”

Merlin doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. Tequila can hear his smile just fine.

“How about the other thing?” Merlin asks carefully. “Did it… come up?”

“Yeah, so I told Champ. I offered to vacate my name if they want to designate someone else as Tequila, but he dismissed the idea. Said that they might as well make liaising with Kingsmen Tequila’s official appointment. He gave me his blessing.”

“I’m glad it went painlessly,” Merlin says. “I assumed he would ask pointed questions.”

“Oh, he did. Like I said: he gave his blessing.”

There is a brief stretch of silence on the other end. “Is that so?” Merlin says eventually.

“He may give you the shovel talk, I don’t know,” Tequila grins. “Actually, come to think of it, that will probably be Elizabeth.”

There’s another lingering silence, before Merlin says, “I miss you. I wish I could see you right now.”

“I promise I’ll commandeer the ops center tomorrow and call you from there.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Tequila lowers his head. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I know what you meant. Me too.”

They sit in silence for a little while, and that’s all right, it isn’t strained, they’re just basking in each other’s presence, even continents apart.

“You want me to sext you, or something?” Tequila asks eventually, grinning.

He can just imagine Merlin’s eye roll. “Try that, and I will ensure your name makes it on a no-fly list, and you’re flagged by Heathrow’s airport security and deported forever.”

Tequila laughs lightly, and, after a while, Merlin’s laughter joins him, low and throaty.

“I’m having a double installed into my rest zone in the command center.”

Tequila groans dramatically. “Now he tells me.”

“More incentive for you to haul ass back here. It’s waiting to be christened.”

Tequila shakes his head. “Such a tease.”

He desperately wishes Merlin could be here. Not because he misses him, although he does, but because this is his old haunt, the bars, the ranches, the fields, but there’s no pleasure in coming back here alone. He wants to share this part of his past with Merlin, and it doesn’t sit right with him, being this far apart, not for a job, not for an assignment, but for reasons of family and personal pleasure. These are not the things they’re meant to do apart anymore, and it feels lonely.

“Book me a flight back, yeah?” he says quietly.

“All right,” Merlin says. “I can have you back here tomorrow.”

Tequila lets out a whuff of laughter and answers the unspoken question in that dig. “Champ has prepared a couple of cases for me. He assumed I’d want to go back to working straight away. Darn sweet of him. I looked it over, and it shouldn’t take me more than two weeks of field work. So, let’s say, three weeks time? Seems unfair to leave any earlier than that.”

“I’ll make the arrangements.”

Tequila nods. He isn’t unhappy here, and he’s sure he’ll enjoy these three weeks. It will be nice to work with Agent Whiskey again, especially as a full field agent.

“Three weeks will be up practically tomorrow,” he says.

“I don’t think there is any kind of an outlook that makes that statement true,” Merlin says dryly.

“You going to sleep?” Tequila asks softly.

“Mm. Not yet.”

“You should,” he chides him warmly. Merlin never keeps proper hours, and he really ought to know better. “Go to sleep, Merlin. I will wake you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Merlin agrees. After a brief pause, the line goes dead, and Tequila sighs and slips the earpiece into his jacket pocket. His chest feels warm.

Outside his room is a familiar sight of the distillery, winding down for the evening. Somewhere, across the pond, the sun has already set on their castle, but here it’s still cresting over the horizon. He has hours in his day left, hours he should spend brainstorming the investigation Champ has attached him to.

His hand is still curled around the earpiece in his pocket, cradling it. A smile is playing over his lips. His thoughts are miles away, with England. He’ll get to the files in a second. But not just yet. Not just yet…


End file.
